His persistence, his gentleness, the careful lucidity of his craze drove her fairly beside herself. "Oh," she cried again, "if you ain't mad, then I must be, or elst I'm sickenin' for it! It don't much matter, any'ow. We got to starve 'ere an' die, an' the sooner the better." She walked across the beach to a smooth slab of rock and seated herself sullenly, with her eyes on the distant mainland. They were misty with tears of anger, of despair. But he could not see them, for she had resolutely turned her back on him. Had she broken down--had she uttered one sob even--the boy would have run to her side. As it was, he gazed at her sorrowfully. . . . She had lost her temper again, and it spoiled everything. But the spell of the Island was on him. Above, in the sunlight, the green gully wound upward and inland, inviting him; and here on the shingle at his feet sat 'Dolph and looked up at him, with eyes that appealed for a ramble. The dog's teeth chattered, and small suppressed noises worked in his throat. "Very well," called the boy, "I am going, and you can sit there or follow, as you like." He swung on his heel and set forth, 'Dolph scampering ahead and barking so wildly that the noise of it scared the birds again in flock after flock from their ledges. On the ridge the boy halted for a moment and looked down. But Tilda sat stubbornly on her rock, still with her back turned. She had pulled out her book, the _Lady's Vade-Mecum_, but only for a pretence. She did not in the least want to read, nor could her eyes just now have distinguished a word of the text. She was wholly miserable; and yet, curiously enough, after the first minute her misery did not rest on despair, or at any rate not consciously. She was wretched because the boy had broken away and gone without her, and 'Dolph with him--'Dolph, her own dog. They were ungrateful. . . . Had not everything gone right so long as they had obeyed her? While now--They would find out, of course. Even Arthur Miles would begin to feel hungry after a while, and then--'Dolph might keep going for a time on rabbits, though as a circus-dog he was not clever at sport.