Adventure, February 1917 — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Nobody’s Island was as if some blurring hand had been drawn across a fine miniature, dulling the colors and blunting the clear detail. She was lovely; she would be lovely to her grave; . but her loveliness shone no longer. The golden hair was less bright; the eyes seemed veiled; into the carriage that had been so imperial, something like the droop of a flower had crept. Unbroken she stood, but the soul of-her was flexed. From Slade, too, something had gone— the calm, outward-looking gaze that is worn by happy faces; the even set of feature that tells a heart at ease. Nothing shows more clearly the rocks and rapids of life than the marks of time, even on the least expressive face. There, where you see those two down- ward ripples at the corners of the mouth—. that is where the tide broke over a rock of death; the rock is hidden, but the ripple of the tide remains. That spot where the lines - run straight and streaked from hair to eye- brow root—there the stream met with sud- den depths, hiding dark things. No one has heard of it; no one will ever know. But the lines of the current of life have ee the spot. The faces of Slade and Edith were changed. The angel with the flaming sword was on his way to the gates of their island Paradise, and they heard-the flutter of his wings. Their bodies walked in the Garden of Eden still, but their souls were already abroad in the wilderness. Whatever might come of Campbell and his visit, one thing was sure, that things would be as they had been no more. - And Edith, as we all do when the face of the known and common is suddenly turned away from us, leaving instead the face of something dark and strange—Edith regret- ted with unspeakable bitterness the calm that had passed before that storm. She had actually wondered if she could endure a life, a few years even, of this wild existence at the ends of the earth. She had - hankered after things that were not worth the smallest note of the wild birds in the forest, on those evenings when she and her ~lover-husband wandered out beneath the moon of Paradise. She had— Oh, what did it matter? The end was come. They talked, these two; they were afraid of silence. They spoke about the weather and the island and the garden, and the strange sights on Jamieson Island, and the last news from Samarai. And all the time 95 they trod, smiling, on sharp knives, like the Little Princess of whom Edith had spoken, laughingly, in the happy days that lay be- hind. Everything they spoke of had its edge. The island, the garden. Who would sail into Silence Bay? Who would gather the fruits they had planted, in the time to come? Jamieson Island? One could not speak of that without thinking again of the fairy valley with the blossoming pa 7 wpaw trees, where Edith and Slade had called ima themselves Deirdre and Naisi in the glens of Alban, and laughed at the thought of misery or ill-fortune, such as followed on those lovers of the Children of Usna. What subject in the world was there that they — could speak of without treading on the in- visible knives that sprang up everywhere? But they talked. from worrying.” gining what may happen,” “Tt will keep him from each thought; and each called up smiles, and the ghosts of the light, merry words that had “Tt will keep her mind ~ danced at their bidding, only a few days ~ ago. And so they went together, in the Garden of Paradise, that was the Garden of Paradise no longer. In the sago cottage the Captain found only Murua, sitting alone, busy with some -kind of sewing. The young girl was dressed % in plain white, without a touch of color; in her hair was a wreath of something that looked like black flowers, and the same black flowers caught up her light dress here and there. There was a suggestion of mourning about the dress; and it was car- ried out by the quiet gravity of her face. Murua had not loved Harold Page in life, but she regretted him when dead, perhaps more than she would have cared to ac- knowledge. He had been such a creature of the sun, and,his end—for one who should have died among flowers and sunshine, with the music that he loved about him—had been so terrible, and so unthinkably alien from his light, butterfly life, that it carried a horror all its own. Murua did not color on seeing the sailor’s straight, lithe figure march into the sitting- room; she turned a little pale, and rose to greet him. “T am sorry that Mr. and Mrs. Slade are out,” she said. ‘‘I will have them sent for; they can not have gone far, because Mr. Slade is still a little lame.” She beckoned to a boy and gave him her ICOmIcbooks (E@)