"It is like the _Falcon_," said Beatrice, on the first evening. "Let us forget all about the journey over the sea, and our stay on the island."
"I can never forget that I owe my life to you," said Brandon, vehemently.
"And I," rejoined Beatrice, with kindling eyes, which yet were softened by a certain emotion of indescribable tenderness--"I--how can I forget! Twice you saved me from a fearful death, and then you toiled to save my life till your own sank under it."
"I would gladly give up a thousand lives"--said Brandon, in a low voice, while his eyes were illumined with a passion which had never before been permitted to get beyond control, but now rose visibly, and irresistibly.
"If you have a life to give," said Beatrice, calmly, returning his fevered gaze with a full look of tender sympathy--"if you have a life to give, let it be given to that _purpose_ of yours to which you are devoted."
"You refuse it, then!" cried Brandon, vehemently and reproachfully.
Beatrice returned his reproachful gaze with one equally reproachful, and raising her calm eyes to Heaven, said, in a tremulous voice,
"You have no right to say so--least of all to _me_. I said what you feel and know; and it is this, that others require your life, in comparison with whom I am nothing. Ah, my friend," she continued, in tones of unutterable sadness, "let us be friends here at least, on the sea, for when we reach England we must be separated for evermore!"
"For evermore!" repeated Beatrice, in equal anguish.
"Do you feel very eager to get to England?" asked Brandon, after a long silence.
"Because I know that there is sorrow for me there."
"If our boat had been destroyed on the shore of that island," he asked, in almost an imploring voice, "would you have grieved?"
"The present is better than the future. Oh, that my dream had continued forever, and that I had never awaked to the bitterness of life!"
"That," said Beatrice, with a mournful smile, "is a reproach to me for watching you."
"Yet that moment of awaking was sweet beyond all thought," continued Brandon, in a musing tone, "for I had lost all memory of all things except you."
They stood in silence, sometimes looking at one another, sometimes at the sea, while the dark shadows of the Future swept gloomily before their eyes.