“I should despise the place if I had to live here a day without you,” she said simply.

“What do you mean?” She did not answer at once.  When she did, it was earnestly and without the least embarrassment.

“Can’t I make you understand how much you are to me?” she asked without a blush.  “You are the best, the noblest man I’ve ever known.  I like you so well that I do not know how I could live if I did not have you to talk to, if I could not see you and be with you.  Do you know what I did last night?”

He could only shake his head and tremble with the joy of feeling once more that she loved him and did not understand.

“I prayed that we might never be taken from the island,” she said hurriedly, as if expecting him to condemn her for the wish.  He rolled over on his back, closed his eyes, and tried to control a joyous, leaping heart.  “It was so foolish, you know, to pray for that, but I’ve been so contented and happy here, Hugh.  Of course, I don’t expect we are to live here always.  They will find us some day.”  He opened his eyes and hazarded a glance at his face.  She smiled and said, “I’m afraid they will.”

There was but the space of five feet between them.  How he kept from bounding to her side and clasping her in his arms he never knew; he was in a daze of delight.  So certain of her love was he now that, through some inexplicable impulse, he closed his eyes again and waited to hear more of the delicious confession.

“Then we shall leave the prettiest land in the world, a land where show and pomp are not to be found, where nature reigns without the touch of sham, and go back to a world where all is deceit, mockery, display.  I love everything on this island,” she cried ecstatically.  He said nothing, so she continued:  “I may be an exile forever, but I feel richer instead of poorer away off here in this unknown paradise.  How glorious it is to be one’s self absolutely, at all times and in all places, without a thought of what the world may say.  Here I am free, I am a part of nature.”

“Do you think you know yourself fully?” he asked as quietly as he could.

“Know myself?” she laughed.  “Like a book.”

“Could you love this island if you were here alone?”

“Well, I—­suppose—­not,” she said, calculatively.  “It would not be the same, you know.”

“Don’t you know why you feel as you do about this God-forsaken land, Tennys Huntingford?” he demanded, suddenly drawing very near to her, his burning eyes bent upon hers.  “Don’t you know why you are happy here?” She was confused and disturbed by his manner.  That same peculiar flutter of the heart she had felt weeks ago on the little knoll attacked her sharply.

“I—­I—­I’m sure—­I am happy just because I am, I dare say,” she faltered, conscious of an imperative inclination to lower her eyes, but strangely unable to do so.

“You love this island because you love me,” he whispered in her ear.