“But I knew, I knew,” she murmured.  “You betrayed yourself so many times.  You wrote your secret to me, and, though you did not tell me, I found your dear words on the sands, and have treasured them next my heart.”

What girlish romance was this?  He held her away gingerly, just so far that he could look into her eyes.

“Oh, it is true, quite true,” she cried, drawing the locket from her neck.  “Don’t you recognize your own handwriting, or were you not certain, just then, that you really did love me?”

Dear, dear!  How often would she repeat that wondrous phrase!  Together they bent over the tiny slips of paper.  There it was again—­“I love you”—­twice blazoned in magic symbols.  With blushing eagerness she told him how, by mere accident of course, she caught sight of her own name.  It was not very wrong, was it, to pick up that tiny scrap, or those others, which she could not help seeing, and which unfolded their simple tale so truthfully?  Wrong!  It was so delightfully right that he must kiss her again to emphasize his convictions.

All this fondling and love-making had, of course, an air of grotesque absurdity because indulged in by two grimy and tattered individuals crouching beneath a tarpaulin on a rocky ledge, and surrounded by bloodthirsty savages intent on their destruction.  Such incidents require the setting of convention, the conservatory, with its wealth of flowers and plants, a summer wood, a Chippendale drawing-room.  And yet, God wot, men and women have loved each other in this grey old world without stopping to consider the appropriateness of place and season.

After a delicious pause Iris began again——­

“Robert—­I must call you Robert now—­there, there, please let me get a word in even edgeways—­well then, Robert dear, I do not care much what happens now.  I suppose it was very wicked and foolish of me to speak as I did before—­before you called me Iris.  Now tell me at once.  Why did you call me Iris?”

“You must propound that riddle to your godfather.”

“No wriggling, please.  Why did you do it?”

“Because I could not help myself.  It slid out unawares.”

“How long have you thought of me only as Iris, your Iris?”

“Ever since I first understood that somewhere in the wide world was a dear woman to love me and be loved.”

“But at one time you thought her name was Elizabeth?”

“A delusion, a mirage!  That is why those who christened you had the wisdom of the gods.”

Another interlude.  They grew calmer, more sedate.  It was so undeniably true they loved one another that the fact was becoming venerable with age.  Iris was perhaps the first to recognize its quiet certainty.

“As I cannot get you to talk reasonably,” she protested, “I must appeal to your sympathy.  I am hungry, and oh, so thirsty.”

The girl had hardly eaten a morsel for her midday meal.  Then she was despondent, utterly broken-hearted.  Now she was filled with new hope.  There was a fresh motive in existence.  Whether destined to live an hour or half a century, she would never, never leave him, nor, of course, could he ever, ever leave her.  Some things were quite impossible—­for example, that they should part.