He knew that it must
be made sooner or later, and he knew, too, that its commencement
would mark the beginning of the end of his association with
Miss Harding, and that after that was ended life
would be a dreary waste.
Either they would be picked up by a passing vessel or
murdered by the natives, but in the latter event his separation
from the woman he loved would be no more certain or
absolute than in her return to her own people, for Billy
Byrne knew that he "didn't belong" in any society that knew
Miss Barbara Harding, and he feared that once they had
regained civilization there would be a return on the girl's
part to the old haughty aloofness, and that again he would
be to her only a creature of a lower order, such as she
and her kind addressed with a patronizing air as, "my
man."
He intended, of course, to make every possible attempt
to restore her to her home; but, he argued, was it wrong to
snatch a few golden hours of happiness in return for his
service, and as partial recompense for the lifetime of lonely
misery that must be his when the woman he loved had passed
out of his life forever? Billy thought not, and so he tarried
on upon "Manhattan Island," as Barbara had christened it,
and he lived in the second finest residence in town upon the
opposite side of "Riverside Drive" from the palatial home of
Miss Harding.
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