mad. It's truth, absolute truth. Wait--" I comforted him as well as I
could. After a little time he took up his story.

"Never," he said, "did man welcome the sun as we did that morning. A
soon as it had risen we went back to the courtyard. The walls whereon
I had seen Stanton were black and silent. The terraces were as they
had been. The grey slab was in its place. In the shallow hollow at its
base was--nothing. Nothing--nothing was there anywhere on the islet
of Stanton--not a trace.

"What were we to do? Precisely the same arguments that had kept us
there the night before held good now--and doubly good. We could not
abandon these two; could not go as long as there was the faintest hope
of finding them--and yet for love of each other how could we remain? I
loved my wife,--how much I never knew until that day; and she loved me
as deeply.

"'It takes only one each night,' she pleaded. 'Beloved, let it take
me.'

"I wept, Walter. We both wept.

"'We will meet it together,' she said. And it was thus at last that
we arranged it."

"That took great courage indeed, Throckmartin," I interrupted. He
looked at me eagerly.

"You do believe then?" he exclaimed.