By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

"It was not for this," she murmured at last, "that I brought you here, although it makes me very happy, and I am glad we came."

"I, too, am glad," said the man, a little unsteadily; "but why did you bring me here?"

"It was death for you to go in that house."

"Death? Whence would it come?"

"The spirits. None goes there but the oldest man, except on the day of the full moon, when we all come in, but we stay near the door, while only Kobo goes to the further end."

"What does he there?"

"I know not. The spirits speak to him. Our faces are hidden. No one goes into the building except then. It is taboo, death. I do not know what they would do to you if they caught you there," she went on, switching from the spirits to the living with wondrous facility.

"Truda," said the man, "I have no desire to anger your gods, but I must go there. You do not know how you came here."

"Kobo says that many, many, many moons ago, so great in number that no one can count them, our ancestors came from across the sea. That is all."

"I want to find out why they came and all about them and I feel that I can find out there. The great God I worship, who has preserved me from all the perils of the deep, will watch over me. I must go there."

"But not tonight. It is the one night when Kobo sleeps within. The spirits obey him. I know not what they might do."

"Tonight," answered Beekman, "I have better occupation."

"And what is that?"

"To be here with you, to love you with none by to look or listen." He pointed to a low, broad shelf of rock. "Sit there," he said, "and I will sit here at your feet." Throwing himself down, he leaned his elbow on her knee and looked up at her. "Do you know," he continued, "there is a land far across the sea, a land of brave men and beautiful women? They speak your language. Your fathers must have come from there as mine did. I want to find out. Some day we shall get back to the world and that land, you and I. I want to know all about you."

"That you are here, that I love you, is enough for me to know," whispered the woman, caressing his head with her hand.

He kissed the pretty palm and smiled up at her as he answered.

"But that is not enough for me."

"You say there are other women in that land?"

"Many."

"How is it called?"

"Holland. It is a low country that borders the sea."

"And those women, they are beautiful?"

"Many of them."

"Would you love me if you should see others here?"

The man laughed.

"You are the most beautiful woman on this island."

"Yes," said the girl, simply.

"And in the world," he whispered. "But no matter how others might look, they would be nothing to me."

And again he gave no thought to Stephanie Maynard nor to any other woman in the lands far away beyond the seas. She smiled down at him.

"It is good to hear you say that."

"It is my turn now," he went on. "There are other men there, bigger, stronger, wiser, handsomer men than I. When you shall see them-"

"I shall never see any one but you anywhere all my life," answered the girl, simply.

"But Hano?"

"I was to marry him only because he was the best."

"And if you found one better than I?"

"There could be none."

"I shall do my best to keep you in that belief," answered Beekman. "Oh, Truda, beautiful, innocent little Truda, when I lay starving, dying on that barrier yonder, my hands red with the blood of men, parted apparently forever from all that made life worth while to me, I cursed my fortune and would fain have died, but now-"

"But now?" whispered the girl.

"Now I have passed from death unto life, for you are worth it all. I am glad to tell you so on this very spot. Here where I saw you first. Look," he said, rising and drawing her up close to him. They stepped to the very brink of the cliff.

The whole great cup was now brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, which streamed straight through the rift and turned the black water far beneath them into a still mirror of polished silver.

"I see."

"I lay there on the sand, half-fainting, half-dead, staring upward at these grim, forbidding walls, when, as the sunlight broke through the rift, I saw you for the first time. I never had seen anything so beautiful, so dazzling to the eye. I was doubtful whether you were a human being even. I thought you might be some vision, some spirit of the air, some messenger from the sun."

"Do the men in that world whence you came all talk like you, Beek-man?" queried Truda, using the only name she knew him by.

"None," answered the man, "because none of them have ever seen you."

In such sweet and passionate converse the night hours drew on unmarked until the gray light on the horizon bespoke the coming of dawn.

"We must go back," said the girl, withdrawing herself for the last time from the sweet embrace. "I would not have any one find us here. In the morning I shall tell Kobo that I will have no other man but you."

"Let us wait," said the man, "until I have visited that building and wrested from it the secrets that must be there, then we shall tell him and you shall be my wife."

"I know not that English word yet, but you will be my man, and I will be your woman when Kobo, without whom these things cannot rightly be, shall have worshipped the spirits and said the words."

"It is well. You say Kobo only sleeps in the building this one night?"

"That is all."