“Walter, old friend!” he cried. “Don’t look at me as though I were mad. It’s truth, absolute truth. Wait⁠—” I comforted him as well as I could. After a little time he took up his story.

“Never,” he said, “did man welcome the sun as we did that morning. A soon as it had risen we went back to the courtyard. The walls whereon I had seen Stanton were black and silent. The terraces were as they had been. The grey slab was in its place. In the shallow hollow at its base was⁠—nothing. Nothing⁠—nothing was there anywhere on the islet of Stanton⁠—not a trace.

“What were we to do? Precisely the same arguments that had kept us there the night before held good now⁠—and doubly good. We could not abandon these two; could not go as long as there was the faintest hope of finding them⁠—and yet for love of each other how could we remain? I loved my wife⁠—how much I never knew until that day; and she loved me as deeply.

“ ‘It takes only one each night,’ she pleaded. ‘Beloved, let it take me.’