The comrades of her solitude were deserted.  She made rapid progress in human speech.  Gradually her voice lost its cross between a croak and a trill and acquired a feminine resemblance to her instructor’s.  At the end of a month they could speak together after a fashion.  When she made her first sentence, haltingly but surely, she leaped to her feet and executed a wild war dance.  They were on the plain of the dead.  She flung her supple legs among the skeletons, sending the bones flying, her bright hair tossing about her like waves of fire.  The priest watched her with bated breath, half expecting to see the outraged warriors arise in wrath.  The gaunt dogs that were always prowling about the plain fled in dismay.

The month had passed very agreeably to the priest.  After the horrors of his earlier experience it seemed for a time that he had little more to ask of life.  Dorthe knew nothing of love; but he knew that if no ship came, she would learn, and he would teach her.  He had loved no woman, but he felt that in this vast solitude he could love Dorthe and be happy with her.  In the languor of convalescence he dreamed of the hour when he should take her in his arms and see the frank regard in her eyes for the last time.  The tranquil air was heavy with the perfumes of spring.  The palms were rigid.  The blue butterflies sat with folded wings.  The birds hung their drowsy heads.

But with returning strength came the desire for civilization, the awakening of his ambitions, the desire for intellectual activity.  He stood on the beach for hours at a time, straining his eyes for passing ships.  He kept a fire on the cliffs constantly burning.  Dorthe’s instincts were awakening, and she was vaguely troubled.  The common inheritance was close upon her.

The priest now put all thoughts of love sternly from him.  Love meant a lifetime on the island, for he would not desert her, and to take her to Santa Barbara would mean the death of all his hopes.  And yet in his way he loved her, and there were nights when he sat by the watch-fire and shed bitter tears.  He had read the story of Juan and Haidee, by no means without sympathy, and he wished more than once that he had the mind and nature of the poet; but to violate his own would be productive of misery to both.  He was no amorous youth, but a man with a purpose, and that, for him, was the end of it.  But he spent many hours with her, talking to her of life beyond the island, a story to which she listened with eager interest.

One night as he was about to leave her, she dropped her face into her hands and cried heavily.  Instinctively he put his arms about her, and she as instinctively clung to him, terrified and appealing.  He kissed her, not once, but many times, intoxicated and happy.  She broke from him suddenly and ran to her cave; and he, chilled and angry, went to his camp-fire.

It was a very brilliant night.  An hour later he saw something skim the horizon.  Later still he saw that the object was closer, and that it was steering for the harbour.  He ran to meet it.