His earnest assurances on this point had their effect.  She sat up and smiled at him through her tears.

“Yes, I know, my Christopher,” she said, and kissed him between the eyes.  “But the difficulty now is, what are we going to do?”

Columbus pondered for a few seconds, and then suggested a crab-hunt.

“Excellent idea!” said Juliet, and let him go.

But she herself sat on in the early sunshine with her chin upon her hand for a long, long time.

The tide was coming in.  The white-tipped waves broke in flashing foam that spread almost to her feet.  The sparkle of it danced in her dreaming eyes, but it did not rouse her from her reverie.

Perhaps she was half asleep after the weary watching of the night, or perhaps she was only too tired to notice, but when a voice suddenly spoke behind her she started as if at an electric shock.  She had almost begun to feel that she and Columbus were indeed marooned on this wide shore.

“Are you waiting for the sea to carry you away?” the voice said.  “Because you won’t have to wait much longer now.”

She turned as she sat.  She had heard no sound of approaching feet.  The swish of the waves had covered all beside.  She looked up at him with a feeling of utter helplessness.  “You!” she said.

He turned behind her, slim, upright, intensely vital, in the morning light.  She had an impression that he was dressed in loose flannels, and she saw a bath-towel hanging round his neck.

“You have been bathing,” she said.

He laughed down at her, she saw the gleam of the white teeth in his dark face.  “I say, what a good guess!  You look shocked.  Is it wrong to bathe on Sunday?”

And then quite naturally he stretched a hand to her and helped her to her feet.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” he said.  “I was only a dot in the ocean, so of course you didn’t see me.  I say,—­tell me,—­what’s the matter?”

The question was so sudden that it caught her unawares.  She found herself looking straight into the dark eyes and wondering at their steady kindliness.  She knew instinctively that she looked into the eyes of a friend, and as a friend she spoke in answer.

“I have had rather a worrying night.  I came out for a little fresh air.  It was such a perfect morning.”

“And you hoped you would have the place to yourself and be able to cry it off in comfort,” he said.  “I wouldn’t have interfered for the world if I hadn’t been afraid that you were going to drown yourself into the bargain.  And I really couldn’t bear that.  There are limits, you know.”

She laughed a little in spite of herself.  “No, I have no intention of drowning myself.  I am not so desperate as that.”

He smiled at her whimsically.  “It happens sometimes unintentionally.  Let’s climb up to the next shelf and sit down!”

Her hand was still in his.  He kept it to help her up the tumbling stones to a higher ridge of shingle.