He found no cave or hut.

When he had finished his search, he sat and waited and watched till the sun set over the sea; but to-day there was no smiling face rearing itself from the blue water, no little hand beckoning him away.
"What a fool I was not to go where she beckoned!" mused Caius.

"Where?
Anywhere into the heart of the ocean, out of this dull, sordid life into the land of dreams." For it must all have been a dream--a sweet, fantastic dream, imposed upon his senses by some influence, outward or inward; but it seemed to him that at the hour when he seemed to see the maid it might have been given him to enter the world of dreams, and go on in some existence which was a truer reality than the one in which he now was.

In a deliberate way he thought that perhaps, if the truth were known, he, Dr.
Caius Simpson, was going a little mad; but as he sat by the softly lapping sea he did not regret this madness: what he did regret was that he must go home and--talk to Mabel.
He rowed his boat back with feelings of blank disappointment.

He could not give another day to idleness upon the shore.