rnestly and without the least embarrassment.

"Can't I make you understand how much you are to me?" she asked without
a blush. "You are the best, the noblest man I've ever known. I like you
so well that I do not know how I could live if I did not have you to
talk to, if I could not see you and be with you. Do you know what I did
last night?"

He could only shake his head and tremble with the joy of feeling once
more that she loved him and did not understand.

"I prayed that we might never be taken from the island," she said
hurriedly, as if expecting him to condemn her for the wish. He rolled
over on his back, closed his eyes, and tried to control a joyous,
leaping heart. "It was so foolish, you know, to pray for that, but I've
been so contented and happy here, Hugh. Of course, I don't expect we are
to live here always. They will find us some day." He opened his eyes and
hazarded a glance at his face. She smiled and said, "I'm afraid
they will."

There was but the space of five feet between them. How he kept from
bounding to her side and clasping her in his arms he never knew; he was
in a daze of delight. So certain of her love was he now that, through
some inexplicable impulse, he closed his eyes again and waited to hear
more of the delicious confession.

"Then we shall leave the prettiest land in the world, a land where show
and pomp are not to be found, where nature reigns without the touch of
sham, and go back to a world where all is deceit, mockery, display. I
love everything on this island," she cried ecstatically. He said
nothing, so she continued: "I may be an exile forever, but I feel richer
instead of poorer away off here in this unknown paradise. How glorious
it is to be one's self absolutely, at all times and in all places,
without a thought of what the world may say. Here I am free, I am a part
of nature."

"Do you think you know yourself fully?" he asked as quietly as he could.

"Know myself?" she laughed. "Like a book."

"Could you love this island if you were here alone?"

"Well, I--suppose--not," she said, calculatively. "It would not be the
same, you know."

"Don't you know why you feel as you do about this God-forsaken land,
Tennys Huntingford?" he demanded, suddenly drawing very near to her, his
burning eyes bent upon hers. "Don't you know why you are happy here?"
She was confused and disturbed by his manner. That same peculiar flutter
of the heart she had felt weeks ago on the little kno