For a little while they yielded to the glamour of the divine knowledge that amidst the chaos of eternity each soul had found its mate. There was no need for words. Love, tremendous in its power, unfathomable in its mystery, had cast its spell over them. They were garbed in light, throned in a palace built by fairy hands. On all sides squatted the ghouls of privation, misery, danger, even grim death; but they heeded not the Inferno; they had created a Paradise in an earthly hell.
Then Iris withdrew herself from the man's embrace. She was delightfully shy and timid now.
"So you really do love me?" she whispered, crimson-faced, with shining eyes and parted lips.
He drew her to him again and kissed her tenderly. For he had cast all doubt to the winds. No matter what the future had in store she was his, his only; it was not in man's power to part them. A glorious effulgence dazzled his brain. Her love had given him the strength of Goliath, the confidence of David. He would pluck her from the perils that environed her. The Dyak was not yet born who should rend her from him.
He fondled her hair and gently rubbed her cheek with his rough fingers. The sudden sense of ownership of this fair woman was entrancing. It almost bewildered him to find Iris nestling close, clinging to him in utter confidence and trust.
"But I knew, I knew," she murmured. "You betrayed yourself so many times. You wrote your secret to me, and, though you did not tell me, I found your dear words on the sands, and have treasured them next my heart."
What girlish romance was this? He held her away gingerly, just so far that he could look into her eyes.
"Oh, it is true, quite true," she cried, drawing the locket from her neck. "Don't you recognize your own handwriting, or were you not certain, just then, that you really did love me?"
Dear, dear! How often would she repeat that wondrous phrase! Together they bent over the tiny slips of paper. There it was again—"I love you"—twice blazoned in magic symbols. With blushing eagerness she told him how, by mere accident of course, she caught sight of her own name. It was not very wrong, was it, to pick up that tiny scrap, or those others, which she could not help seeing, and which unfolded their simple tale so truthfully? Wrong! It was so delightfully right that he must kiss her again to emphasize his convictions.
All this fondling and love-making had, of course, an air of grotesque absurdity because indulged in by two grimy and tattered individuals crouching beneath a tarpaulin on a rocky ledge, and surrounded by bloodthirsty savages intent on their destruction. Such incidents require the setting of convention, the conservatory, with its wealth of flowers and plants, a summer wood, a Chippendale drawing-room. And yet, God wot, men and women have loved each other in this grey old world without stopping to consider the appropriateness of place and season.