CHAPTER XVIII
THE VANISHING OF ISBEL
Next morning, when Floyd came out on the beach, he could not find Isbel.
He called to her, and there was no reply; then he started off to hunt for her in the grove, but she was not there.
He went to the seaward side of the reef; the breakers were falling and the gulls flying, but there was no sign of Isbel. She had vanished as completely as though she had never been. Floyd, in perplexity, shaded his eyes and gazed toward the sea line, as though he fancied some ship might have come and taken her off, but the sea line was as empty as the sea, and the only thing visible away out there was a frigate bird sailing on the wind.
The bird was passing the island with supreme indifference, traveling under the dominion of some steady purpose, and heading for some destination, perhaps half a thousand miles away. It dwindled in the blue, and Floyd, turning, took his way back to the beach.
The dinghy and quarter boat were still there, otherwise he might have fancied that she had gone to the fishing camp; the thing seemed inexplicable, and trying to put it from his mind, he set to on the preparations for breakfast. He lit the fire and put some water on to boil, opened some canned stuff, and then, having set a plate and knife and fork, made the coffee. He did all this automatically, working by instinct and habit, and almost heedless of what he was doing. A great desolation had fallen upon him, and a great fear, and in the midst of this desolation and fear something was calling out to him, a voice he had never heard before.
With the food untasted before him, he sat with his chin on his hands, gazing at the beach, white in the burning sunshine, and across the water of the lagoon, blue and ruffled by the morning wind.
Isbel, from the very first, had been for him a pleasing figure, quaint and with something of mystery about it. He did not know till now how much of his subconscious life she had occupied, nor how much he had really cared for her. She had grown on him till he had come to love her; that was the fact, and a fact that he recognized now in the pain and fear and desolation of his heart.
It was the strangest and rarest form of love, this love of his for Isbel. The love of a lonely man for a flower, or a child, and with just the hint of the love of a man for a woman.