_I_ don't want to go

[Ragus]

On, all had passed away out of her life like a dream and shadows. The
other one too, most horribly. What if Dick were taken from her as well?
This haunting trouble had been with her a long time; up to a few months
ago it had been mainly personal and selfish--the dread of being left
alone. But lately it had altered and become more acute. Dick had changed
in her eyes, and the fear was now for him. Her own personality had
suddenly and strangely become merged in his. The idea of life without
him was unthinkable, yet the trouble remained, a menace in the blue.
Some days it would be worse than others. To-day, for instance, it was
worse than yesterday, as though some danger had crept close to them
during the night. Yet the sky and sea were stainless, the sun shone on
tree and flower, the west wind brought the tune of the far-away reef
like a lullaby. There was nothing to hint of danger or the need of
distrust. At last Dick finished his spear and rose to his feet. "Where
are you going?" asked Emmeline. "The reef," he replied. "The tide's
going out." "I'll go with you," said she. He went into the house and
stowed the precious knife away. Then he came out, spear in one hand, and
half a fathom of liana in the other. The liana was for the purpose of
stringing the fish on, should the catch be large. He led the way down
the grassy sward to the lagoon where the dinghy lay, close up to the
bank, and moored to a post driven into the soft soil. Emmeline got in,
and, taking the sculls, he pushed off. The tide was going out. I have
said that the reef just here lay a great way out from the shore. The
lagoon was so shallow that at low tide one could have waded almost right
across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there--ten-feet traps--and
great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink as into brushwood,
to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like a 
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