Starting from its northwestern extreme, he made a complete circuit of the island, spending the greater part of the time along the edges of the western and southern bluffs, where he had not seldom to pause and scrutinize carefully the beach below, to make sure he had been deceived by some half-buried rock or curiously shaped boulder.
To his intense relief, he made no further discovery other than a scattering drift of wreckage from the motor-boats.
By the time he had finished, the morning was well advanced. He turned at length and trudged wearily up from the northern beach, through the community of desolation, back toward the farm-house.
Since breakfast he had seen nothing of the girl; none of the elaborately casual glances which he had from time to time cast inland had discovered any sign of her. But now she appeared in the doorway, and after a slight pause, as of indecision, moved down the path to meet him.
He was conscious that, at sight of her, his pulses quickened. Something swelled in his breast, something tightened the muscles of his throat. The way of her body in action, the way of the sun with her hair...!
Dismay shook him like an ague; he felt his heart divided against itself; he was so glad of her, and so afraid.... He could not keep his eyes from her, nor could he make his desire be still; and yet ... and yet....
Walking the faster of the two, she met him midway between the house and the beach.
"You've taken your time, Mr. Whitaker," said she.
"It was a bit of a walk," he contended, endeavouring to imitate her lightness of manner.
They paused beside one of the low stone walls that meandered in a meaningless fashion this way and that over the uplands. With a satisfied manner that suggested she had been seeking just that very spot, the girl sat down upon the lichened stones, then looked up to him with a smile and a slight movement of the head that plainly invited him to a place beside her.