Her chief beauty lay, perhaps, in the brow, in the shape of the face, and in its wreath of hair--or at least in the charm that these gave to the strong character of the features; but now that he knew her, he knew her face wholly, and his mind filled in what was lacking; he could perceive no lack.

He looked at her, his eyes full of admiration, puzzled the while at her evident surprise.
"But surely," she said, "you cannot be so foolish--you, a man now--to think that the fancy you took to a pretty face, for it could have been nothing more, was of any importance." "Such fancies make or mar the lives of men." "Of unprincipled fools, yes--of men who care for appearance more than sympathy.

But you are not such a man! It is not as if we had been friends; it is not as if we had ever spoken.

It is wicked to call such a foolish fancy by the name of love; it is desecration." While she was speaking, her words revealed to Caius, with swift analysis, a distinction that he had not made before.

He knew now that before he came to this island, before he had gone through the three months of toil and suffering with Josephine Le Maitre, it would truly have been foolish to think of his sentiment concerning her as more than a tender ideal.