'Yes,' he answered, understanding all that her words meant, all the heartbrokenness that they expressed. 'Yes, we are alone; there are no others.' After which he left her, saying that, by dark, or very shortly afterwards, he would be back again. When he had departed, after looking round once to wave his hand ere a bend of the shore hid him from her view (and she noticed that, true to his sailor's instincts, he went towards the boat and inspected it, and then drew it up a little more on to the white-pebbled beach and made the painter more secure), she went down to the rivulet and cooled her face and hands and feet in it, and made some attempt at arranging her hair, while using the stream as a mirror. Yet it was little enough that she could do in the way of a toilet, since she had nothing that would serve as a comb nor any soap or towel. After which, feeling refreshed, nevertheless, by this attempt, she returned to where she had been sitting and gazed out seaward, meditating deeply. 'What an end,' she murmured, as she did so, while from her eyes the tears flowed freely now--the more so because there was none to observe them--'what an end to all! Gilbert, who was to have been my husband, dead! Gilbert, whom I so loved with my whole heart and soul, dead! and lying beneath that ship. Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, my love, come back to me. And my poor uncle and aunt, too. Oh, God, what a disaster! What a disaster!' And now she wept piteously, so piteously that, if that other man, who had risked his own chances to save her as well as himself, could have seen her, the sight would have gone near to break his heart. That other man! At this moment her thoughts turned to him too. Almost unconsciously she found herself thinking of him, speculating on what his future would be. 'He will never marry,' she murmured. 'I know it. Feel sure of it. It would be the idlest affectation to ignore his sentiments for me. Yet--yet--how sad, how mournful a life must his be henceforth; no home to go to, no wife to welcome him, none to make him happy. Poor Mr. Charke. Poor Stephen. Our lots will be similar, we must be friends, always friends.' Meanwhile, he was making his way along the beach, which was still shaded from the sun and becoming, indeed, more and more so as he progressed farther round the island, away from the west. And every step which he took served only to confirm him in what he had believed, known from the first--the unlikelihood of there being any other person saved from the wreck. 'Surely,' he muttered to himself, 'if he should have drifted ashore, it would have been here. The current sets this way, and also the monsoon blows towards this island. Living or dead, he would have come to this neighbourhood if he had come at all. The tiger did that, and, doubtless----'