The Island of Regeneration | Page 5

and again uttered that cry of surprise. Then he turned it
around as if to look on the other side. Then he looked again and still
again. She took it from him unresisting; his eyes full of strange terror.
Life was full of surprises for him that day. He had not only been
touched by a woman, but he had looked at a man as well.
She put the mirror into her waist and then looked at her watch. By a
miracle it was still running, and in a panic lest it should run down and
she be timeless, she wound it up again, while he watched her with the
same great interest. She would learn presently that time on that island
was the least notable of all facts and the least valuable of all the things
that she had to spend.
It was still early, about eight o'clock. How was she to pass the day? She
must do something. She felt she could not sit idly staring from sea to
shore. She must be moving. No business called her; she must invent
some. The compelling necessity of a soul not born for idleness was
upon her. She would explore the land. That was logically the first thing
to be done any way, and this was a highly trained woman who thought
to live by rule and law, albeit her rules were poor ones.
She started inland, the man following after. She had gained confidence
in herself with every passing moment. The man who looked at her as a
dog she would treat as one. She must have some privacy. She could not
always have him trailing at her heels. She turned by a great boulder,
pointed to it, laid her hand on the man's shoulder and gently forced him
to a sitting position by it. Then she walked away. He stared wistfully
after her departing figure, and as she turned around to look at him, he
sprang to his feet.
"No, no!" she cried imperatively, making backward threatening
motions with her hands, whereat he resumed his sitting position, staring
at her until he lost her among the trees.
Presently she turned and came back to him. It was so deathly lonely
without him. He leaped to his feet as he saw her coming and clapped
his hands as a child might have done, his face breaking out into a smile
that was both trustful and touching. She felt better since she had him

under this control, and together they walked on under the trees.
Chapter II
High noon, and they were back at the landing place, and she at least
was very tired. Accompanied by the man, who made not the slightest
attempt to guide her, after some difficulty she had succeeded in forcing
her way through the trees to the top of the hill. Part of the time she had
followed the course of the rivulet from which she had drunk at the foot
of the cliff. She was determined to get to the top, for she must see what
was upon the other side. Humanity's supreme desire when facing the
hills has always been to see what was on the other side. The stimulus of
the unknown was upon her, but it was coupled with a very lively wish
begot of stern necessity to know what there was to be known of the
land upon which she had been cast up by the sea.
Her view from the hilltop -- she did not essay the unclothed and jagged
peak, she could make her way around its base and see all that there was
to see -- was not reassuring. She could detect on the other side of the
island no more evidences of life than were presented by that she had
first touched upon. In every direction lay the unvexed sea. The day was
brilliantly clear; there was not a cloud in the sky. No mist dimmed the
translucent purity of the warm air. Nothing broke the far horizon. The
island, fair and beautiful, was set alone in a mighty ocean. In so far as
she could tell, she and the man were alone upon it. The thought
oppressed her. She strove to throw it off. The silence of the man
oppressed her as well. She turned to him at last and cried out, the words
wrung from her by the horror of the situation :
"Man, man, whence came you? How are you called? What language do
you speak? Why are you here?"
The sound of her own voice gave her courage. Waiting for no answer,
and indeed she realized that none could come, she stepped to the brow
of the hill where the trees happened not to be and, raising her voice,
called and called and