’We continued pacing the beach.  “Yes, I’ve changed all that,” he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; “but only try to think what it would be if I went away.  Jove! can’t you see it?  Hell loose.  No!  To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking that silly old Tunku Allang’s coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles’ eggs.  No.  I can’t say—­enough.  Never.  I must go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can touch me.  I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to—­to” . . .  He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . . “to keep in touch with” . . .  His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . . “with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more.  With—­with—­you, for instance.”

’I was profoundly humbled by his words.  “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself.”  I felt a gratitude, an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude.  How little that was to boast of, after all!  I turned my burning face away; under the low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the approach of the fiery orb.  Twice he was going to speak, but checked himself; at last, as if he had found a formula—­

’"I shall be faithful,” he said quietly.  “I shall be faithful,” he repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires of sunset.  Ah! he was romantic, romantic.  I recalled some words of Stein’s. . . .  “In the destructive element immerse! . . .  To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream—­and so—­always—­usque ad finem . . .”  He was romantic, but none the less true.  Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . .  A small boat, leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars, towards the sandbank to take me off.  “And then there’s Jewel,” he said, out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my very thoughts so that his voice made me start.  “There’s Jewel.”  “Yes,” I murmured.  “I need not tell you what she is to me,” he pursued.  “You’ve seen.  In time she will come to understand . . .”  “I hope so,” I interrupted.  “She trusts me, too,” he mused, and then changed his tone.  “When shall we meet next, I wonder?” he said.

’"Never—­unless you come out,” I answered, avoiding his glance.  He didn’t seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.

’"Good-bye, then,” he said, after a pause.  “Perhaps it’s just as well.”