His eyes were wet.  “Not any more,” he whispered.  “Not now.”

“Then again I saw water—­the other side of the Island.”  She went back to it with an effort, exhausted.  “I ran.  I wanted to get there.  Have it all over—­before anything else could happen.  I couldn’t look—­but I kept saying to myself it would only be a minute—­only a minute—­then it would be all over—­not so bad as having things happen—­being alone—­afraid—­”

She shuddered—­drew back—­living it—­realizing it.  Her visioning—­realizing—­had gone on beyond her words, beyond the events.  She was shuddering as if the water were actually closing over her.  But again she was called back by Katie’s voice and that look he felt he should not be seeing went as a faint smile formed on her lips.  “Then Katie.  Katie calling to me.  Dear Katie—­pretending.

“I didn’t want to go.  I thought it was just something else.  And oh how I wanted to get it all over!” She sobbed.  “But I saw it was a girl.  Sick.  I wasn’t able to help going—­and then—­Well, you know.  Katie.  How she fooled me.  And saved me.”

She looked up at him, again the suggestion of a smile on her colorless lips.  “Was there ever anybody in the world so wonderful—­so funny—­as Katie?

“But at first I couldn’t believe in her.  I thought it must be just something else.”  She stopped, looking at him.  “Why I think it wasn’t till after I met you I felt sure it couldn’t be—­”

His arm about her tightened.  He drew her closer to him.  He was shaken by a deep sob.

And so she rested, lax, murmuring about things that had happened, sometimes smiling faintly as she recalled them.  The terror had gone, as if, as she had known, telling it to him had freed her.  That twisted, unlovely look which he had tried not to see, loving her too well to wish to see it, had gone.  She was worn, but lovely.  She was resting.  At peace.

And so many minutes passed when she would not speak—­resting, rescued.  And then she would whisper of little things that had happened and smile a little and seem to drift the farther into the harbor of security into which she had come.

He saw that—­exhausted, protected, comforted—­she was going to fall asleep.  His heart was all tenderness for her as he held her, adoring her, sorrowing over her, guarding her.  “I haven’t really slept all summer,” she murmured at last, and after a few minutes her breathing told that sleep had come.

But when, in trying to unfasten her collar—­he longed to be doing some little thing for her comfort—­he took his hand from hers, she started up in alarm and he had to put it back, reassuring her, telling her that she was not alone, that nothing could ever harm her again.

An hour passed.  And in that hour things which he would have believed fixed loosened and fell.  It was all shaken—­the whole of his thinking.  It could never be the same again.  Old things must go.  New things come.