The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1909-06-06

them come in search Of her islandf 7
The officers of those two ships could
determine accurately the situation OF
that island. 1t would be as easy for n
navigator TO find 1T as for denlZen
Of q city TO go 10 any gwen street
corner, People would come back TO
that island, not to seek her, FOR the
world would believe her dead, but sim.
ply to see the place. Idle yachtsmen
cruising. and she would have to hide
and hide, But would she hldel Would
she go back 10 that world2 Never,
she said, unless he came to fetch her,
And then her thoughts turned again,
Why had he gone away? Had she been
he they could as soon have uprooted
the island itself as torn her from it
under similar circumstances, Had he
been gone, she would have fingered and
died on the spots that were sacred
where he had walked. If she had
known that at that moment her lover
lay fighting for life and reason in the
cabin of the swiftmoving ship, she
would have understood better his alb
sence. That he should be stricken
never occurred to her.
She had been mistaken in him don.
bly,, mistaken when she thought he
would rise TO the test, and once again
ing once fallen, he would not rise
again. She did not know that he had
come ashore in the gray of the dawn
to seek her, to throw himself at her
feet, TO declare that all he had thought
of her was as nothing to what he
thought OF her then; that she was the
sweetest, the noblest, the truest, the
purest woman upon earth; that he
could not live without her; that she
mn fnlr al
give him the place which so briefly he
had enjoyed, If she did not wish to see
him wither and die under her displeas-
ure like an uprootcd palm, a torn down
tree.
She did not know that when he had
called her name at the mouth of her
cave and had entered and not found
her, how terrible the shock had been
to him. She could not see, she could
not hear, she could not know, how he
had been stricken down when he
caught sight of the little heap of
clothes which she had laid out upon
the beach TO make the searchers think
that she had gone.
And it was well for her that these
things were hidden from her, for had
she believed him suffering, dying and
she not there, the separation would
have been more uncomfortable than it
was. she pictured hlm, not happy away
from her, saddened beyond present COM
fort il must be, yet so occupied that
inscnsibly his grief would be lightened
by the only thing after all that makes
life bearable in certain contingencies
and that is work. Work! She, too
had work TO do.
She rose to her feet doggedly as she
thought Of that and considered what
she could do. Her eyes fell upon the
ashes of the signal fire. She contem.
plated it as the specter OF some Hindu
woman whose body had been burned
upon such an affair might look upon
her pyre. IL was she who had lighted
the beacon. Her hand had called the
world to her side. She thought how
he had begged her not to do so, how
he had declared himself content and
happy to live with her alone-the
world forgetting by the world forgot! !
For the first time she broke down
completely. She buried her face in
her hands, her body reeled and shook
with sobs. the tears trickled through
her fingers.
She must make another beacon. she
thought And then it came to her that
they had taken away the flint and
steel. She had no means of lighting it.
That realization developed other
thoughts. Her bible was gone; her
clothes were gone; her toilet articles.