These were his first tears, and inaugurated a grief more tender than ever, but less akin to madness and despair.
Now he used to go about and cry her name aloud, passionately, by night and day.
"Oh, Helen! Helen!"
And next his mind changed in one respect, and he clung to every reminiscence of her. Every morning he went round her haunts, and kissed every place where he had seen her put her hand.
Only the cave he could not yet face.
He tried, too. He went to the mouth of it again and again, and looked in; but go into it and face it, empty of her—he could not.
He prayed often.
One night he saw her in a dream.
She bent a look of angelic pity on him, and said but these words, "Live in my cave," then vanished.
Alone on an island in the vast Pacific, who can escape superstition? It fills the air. He took this communication as a command, and the next night he slept in the cave.