“Perhaps,” he said very quietly, “or perhaps it will kill me first. I cannot tell.”
We stood for some minutes without speaking. “Daniel,” I ventured at last, “I had hoped that in the external ways I might assist you—your food, perhaps——”
“I could not let you serve me,” he answered; “I have no way to serve you in return. And, besides that, I have learned to do cheerfully what little physical toil I must. The island is covered with food, you know.”
“But if you should be sick?” I cried.
“If I should be sick,” he said, “I should either get well again, or else die.”
“Then you do not feel pain?”
“To learn to bear pain has been one of my tasks,” was the response. “I should think,” he continued, changing the subject abruptly, “that if you had studied all your life as you did when we lived together, by this time you would not fear solitude—that you would find in this new world enough to fill all your time.”
“I might—perhaps I shall,” I said; “but, Daniel, you have been here twenty years, and never seen a ship! So how could I know that the result of any studies of mine would ever be made known to the world? I have not even any paper to write upon.”
The other sat gazing ahead of him at the moonlit water through the trees; I saw the strange smile upon the lips again.
“All that sorrow,” he said—“I fought with it once myself, and how I wish that I could help you to fight with it! For a year or so I also waited for a ship, and wrote down the best of my music, and poured out the tears of my soul. But, Edward, I no longer write my music, and I no longer fear lest my work be not made known to the world.”