scarce seeing him. "It is worth trying as a last expedient. We are
abandoned by all, save the Lord; and it does not appear to be His holy
will to help us on earth. We can struggle on here until we die. Is that
right, when one of us may live?"

Her very candor had betrayed her. She would go away with these
monstrous captors, endure them, even flatter them, until she and they
were far removed from the island. And then--she would kill herself. In
her innocence she imagined that self-destruction, under such
circumstances, was a pardonable offence. She only gave a life to save a
life, and greater love than this is not known to God or man.

The sailor, in a tempest of wrath and wild emotion, had it in his mind
to compel her into reason, to shake her, as one shakes a wayward child.

He rose to his knees with this half-formed notion in his fevered brain.
Then he looked at her, and a mist seemed to shut her out from his
sight. Was she lost to him already? Was all that had gone before an
idle dream of joy and grief, a wizard's glimpse of mirrored happiness
and vague perils? Was Iris, the crystal-souled--thrown to him by the
storm-lashed waves--to be snatched away by some irresistible and malign
influence?

In the mere physical effort to assure himself that she was still near
to him he gathered her up in his strong hands. Yes, she was there,
breathing, wondering, palpitating. He folded her closely to his breast,
and, yielding to the passionate longings of his tired heart, whispered
to her--

"My darling, do you think I can survive your loss? You are life itself