'God has been very good to you,' Stephen said, 'and to her. Now I will go and bring her here: it will not take long. Soon, very soon, you will be together. You will be happy. In a couple of hours she will be here. It would, perhaps, be in less time than that, only, you observe, the sea is rising and the surf getting very high. We must come inland, above, by the cliffs. Farewell till then.' 'Farewell. God bless you. Ah, Mr. Charke, if you could only know my gratitude to you for saving her, also what happiness you have brought into my life again. If you could only know that!' But Charke was on his way back to where he had left Bella almost before Gilbert had concluded his sentence, and, beyond a backward wave of his hand, had made no acknowledgment of his words. He climbed up to the summit of the cliffs easily enough, for by now all his strength had come back to him, and he felt as vigorous as he had ever done in his life. Yet, when he gained the top, he noticed that there was still something wanting, some of the spring and elasticity which had characterised the manner in which he had returned to Bella yesterday from the other side of the island. Why was this, he asked himself? Why? But he could find no answer to the question. Yet, perhaps, his musings on what he had heard half an hour before were sufficient to have driven all the life, all the hope, out of him. His musings on the change that this last half-hour had brought into his future. God! his future. 'He was there, close to us,' he reflected, 'and we neither of us knew nor dreamt of it. I could have sworn it was impossible he should be saved. She--well, she did not dare to hope. And for two days! For two days he has been close to us, and--and in those two days what have I not pictured to myself, what dreams have I not had! What a fool's paradise I have been imagining for myself. Now, there is nothing before me. Nothing--now, or ever.' But still he forced himself to stride on, passing sometimes beneath the cocoa trees that grew on the little upland, sometimes through open glades in which the morning sun beat down upon his head with a fierceness only inferior to the strength it would assume an hour or so later--yet he heeded nothing. He felt that he must reach Bella as soon as possible and tell her everything. There was no more joy left in existence for him, but he was the bearer of news that would give her joy extreme, and--he loved her. Because he did so he would not keep that news from her one moment longer than was necessary. 'Yet,' he whispered to himself, while thinking thus, 'she would have come to love me in his place some day, she would--she must. I divined it, saw it. Now, it will never be. Never. My God! it is a long word.' Then he braced himself up still more and went on, until he stood upon the summit of the little elevation which rose behind the spot that they had made their resting-place.