"No need to quarrel about division. There is enough for both of us."
"Quite enough. We can even spare some for our friends."
He took so readily to this definition of their partnership that Iris suddenly became frigid. Then she saw the ridiculous gleam of the tiny wick and blew it out.
"I mean," she said, stiffly, "that if you and I do agree to go shares we will each be very rich."
"Exactly. I applied your words to the mine alone, of course."
A slight thing will shatter a daydream. This sufficed. The sailor resumed his task of burying the stores.
"Poor little lamp!" he thought. "When it came into the greater world how soon it was snuffed out."
But Iris said to herself, "What a silly slip that was of mine! Enough for both of us, indeed! Does he expect me to propose to him? I wonder what the letter was about which he destroyed as I came back after my bath. It must have been meant for me. Why did he write it? Why did he tear it up?"
The hour drew near when Jenks climbed to the Summit Rock. He shouldered axe and rifle and set forth. Iris heard him rustling upwards through the trees. She set some water to boil for tea, and, whilst bringing a fresh supply of fuel, passed the spot where the torn scraps of paper littered the sand.
She was the soul of honor, for a woman, but there was never a woman yet who could take her eyes off a written document which confronted her. She could not help seeing that one small morsel contained her own name. Though mutilated it had clearly read—Miss Deane."