He turned away and walked along the lagoon edge. Always when Fortune turned toward him she had something unpleasant to add to her gifts. The pink pearl had been followed by the running away of Isbel, and the great white pearl by the mutiny of the hands. Isbel had been given to him only yesterday, and now he had to leave her.
Since yesterday he had lived in a state of extraordinary happiness. Wonderland. To love and to find that you are loved. There is nothing else. No dream can come near this reality. And now he had to leave her.
He crossed the reef, and stood looking out to sea. The Pacific lay blazing beneath the morning light, blue beyond the sun dazzle and heaving shoreward to burst in foam at his feet. The breeze came fresh across it, vivid and full of life. Floyd loved the sea.
It had become part of his nature and part of his being. It was his second mother. But to-day he was looking at it with fresh eyes. It was no longer the sea; it was separation from all he cared for and all he loved. He would have to leave Isbel and leave her with Schumer.
When he had landed on the island first, Schumer had impressed him favorably, but little by little and by that slow process through which a complex and illusive personality makes its quality known to a simple and straightforward mind, he had come to the point of distrust as regards Schumer.
He had no fear at all that Schumer would harm Isbel. Isbel was a person who could well take care of herself, and Schumer, he distinctly felt, was not a man dangerous to women. The instinctive feeling of danger had to do with himself. He was a fifth wheel in Schumer's chariot, an absorber of profits, and though he refused the thought that Schumer might attempt to get rid of him, he could not refuse the instinct.
He felt suddenly surrounded by an atmosphere of danger none the less disturbing from the fact that he could not tell from what point it arose. He disliked this journey to Sydney, and he disliked Hakluyt even more.
Brave as any man could be, he feared for his own safety, not for his own sake, but for the sake of Isbel. Should anything happen to him what would become of her?
And there was nothing he could do. He was completely in the grasp of events. He could not refuse to perform this obvious duty that had suddenly been laid down before him by Schumer. He could not take Isbel with him, and he could not take any precautions as to his own safety beyond simple watchfulness.
He turned back from the sea, and as he turned he saw Isbel. She was standing at the edge of the grove, and the trees quite sheltered them from the sight of the people by the house. He came toward her, and they entered the grove together.