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Thus his convalescence progressed in the open air, under the clouds and sun and stars and lustrous moon of that deserted world

Beatrice showed both skill and ingenuity in her treatment With a clam-shell she scraped and saved the rich fat from under the skins of the squirrels, and this she "tried out" in a golden dish, over the fire The oil thus got she used to anoint his healing wound She used a dressing of clay and leaves; and when the fever flushed him she made him comfortable on his bed of spruce-tips, bathed his forehead and cheeks, and gave hi that trickled down over thetalk they had, too--he prone on the spruce, she sitting beside hi his head lie in her lap, the while she stroked his hair Ferns, flowers in profusion--lilacs and clover and clie scarlet blossoh the pain and fever, the delay and disappointlad and cheerful No word of i escaped them For they had life; they had each other; they had love And those days, as later they looked back upon the the happiest, the most purely beautiful, the sweetest of their whole wondrous, strange experience

He and she, perfect friends, comrades and lovers, were inseparable Each was always conscious of the other's presence The continuity of love, care and sympathy was never broken Even when, at daybreak, she went away around the wooded point for her bath in the river, he could hear her splashing and singing and laughing happily in the cold water

It was the Golden Age coe of natural and pure simplicity, truth, trust, honor, faith and joy, unspoiled by malice or deceit, by lies, conventions, sordid ambitions, or the lust of wealth or power Arcady, at last--in truth!

Their conversation was ofin the tower and their adventures there; of the possible cause of the world-catastrophe that had wiped out the hureat battle; their escape, their present condition, and their probable future; the possibility of their ever finding any other isolated hu the huirl would grow strangely silent, and a look almost of inspiration--the universal mother--look of the race--would fill her wondrous eye's Her hand would treht, for he, too, understood