I bent down, and very lightly I kissed the tips of her fingers.
* * * * * * *
Midday the next morning found me, with Rufus by my side, standing in sombre isolation on the extremest promontory of the island. Three miles away the Penguin, now merely a white speck on the water was just rounding the big bluff of Strathmore Head.
"She's gone, my dog," I said, "she's gone!" Rufus looked out to sea and whined dismally.
"Yes," I said; "that's exactly how I feel. But it won't bring her back."
He threw up his head and howled.
"That's no use, either!" I added bitterly. "If it was I should do it myself."
Then, with a last glance seawards, I turned round, and, followed by a very depressed puppy, I made my way slowly across the saltings to where the Scandal was at anchor.
I forget who first launched the theory that work was a successful anodyne for baffled love. Anyway, I can bear personal witness that he was mistaken. No one has ever worked much harder than I did during my remaining three days on the island, and no one has ever been more persistently haunted by the vision of an absent face. I wrote the whole of my article for the Fortnightly—thirteen solid, chunky pages all about Kashmir—and at the end of it I found that I was even fonder of Astarte than when she had left the island.
"This is the mischief," I observed to Rufus. "What are we going to do about it, my dog?"