"And yet you live! How long have you endured the loneliness of this dreary spot?"
"Claude died before the snows fell, and since then François and I have lived I know not how. I have tried to die, but Heaven has been too kind."
La Pommeraye turned away his head, and the sobs he could no longer restrain shook him from head to foot. He struggled for self-control. At last he turned to her, and took her hand to lead her to the boat.
"Your old servant, Etienne Brulé, is with me," he said. "He waits in the boat for you. He will look after you while I collect whatever may be in your hut."
But she drew back a little from him.
"Monsieur, I cannot——" and for the first time her voice faltered. "I cannot leave my dead!"
Even at that moment Charles was conscious of a fierce throb at his heart, as he realised that the woman he loved had irrevocably, for life and for death, given her life to his friend.
As she spoke she turned, and led him past the hut, and up the hill to the little group of graves. The hour of utter separation had come, and she could say nothing. La Pommeraye felt that a word from him would be sacrilege. Silent she stood there, torn between the fearful pang of parting, and the realisation that she must go. At last her will conquered, and she turned to La Pommeraye, saying simply: "I am ready, Monsieur."
Of the fourth who slept in that lonely hillside cemetery she said not a word. The young life had come into being, and had passed away again, there, in this desert spot, amidst the trackless wastes of ocean, unknown to any save the two whose souls it had for ever linked indissolubly. Why should the world be told? The island would keep her secret; and no one in France should ever learn that her child and Claude's lay at rest in his father's grave.