It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, she told me, and had bathed before the last stars had left the sky. I saw at once that the new spirit of this solitary region had entered into her, banishing the fears of the night, for her face was like the face of a happy denizen of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless and shining. Her feet were bare, and drops of dew she had shaken from the branches hung in her loose-flying hair. Obviously she had come into her own.

“I’ve been all over the island,” she announced laughingly, “and there are two things wanting.”

“You’re a good judge, Joan. What are they?”

“There’s no animal life, and there’s no⁠—water.”

“They go together,” I said. “Animals don’t bother with a rock like this unless there’s a spring on it.”