An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman’s.
“Well, you found him?” she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly daring to ask the fatal question at once.
And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, “Yes, Muriel, I found him!”
“And he told you everything?”
“Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don’t ask me what it is. It’s too terrible to tell you.”
Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and looked at him fixedly. “Mali, you can go,” she said. And the Shadow, rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them, for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone together.
Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. “With you, Felix,” she said, slowly, “I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have your promise.”
Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
“Muriel,” he cried, “I couldn’t. I haven’t the heart. I daren’t.”
Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. “You will!” she answered, boldly. “You can! You must! I know I can trust your promise for that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you will never let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from your hand I could stand anything. I’m not afraid to die. I love you too dearly.”