My South Sea Sweetheart

Ivory heard me in silence, and then told Lorraine to take me to dry myself. I don't know what he said to Luke. Luke only told me that "grandad was very decent to him." He did not go beyond the reef again. For myself, not all the treasures of all the world poured out at my feet would have tempted me to venture. I might break sensible rules through childish bravado, but I was never the boy-girl type that courts an actual danger. As for Luke's horror of "being afraid" I saw it, and admired it, but I did not understand it.

In truth, I felt then, as I felt on the morning when we rushed down into the lagoon, that Luke was somehow or other getting away from me. He was changing. How, I did not know. But it seemed to me that Luke and I were somehow no longer one. We had been used to speak without thinking, to talk as we breathed, to understand without talking. Now...

It came back right in the middle of our swim, as we landed together on a coral "horsehead"