He shook a dubious head.
“There may be some one else, somewhere,” he answered slowly, “but there's nobody else in this part of the world, anyhow. Nobody in this particular Eden but just you and me. To all intents and purposes I'm Adam. And you--well, you're Eve! But the tree? We haven't found that--yet.”
She gave him a quick, startled glance, then let her head fall, so that he could not see her eyes. But up over her neck, her cheek and even to her temples, where the lustrous masses of hair fell away, he saw a tide of color mount.
And for a little space the man forgot to smoke. At her he gazed, a strange gleam in his eyes.
And no word passed between them for a while. But their thoughts--?
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
The idea that there might possibly be others of their kind in far-distant parts of the earth worked strongly on the mind of the girl. Next day she broached the subject again to her companion.
“Suppose,” theorized she, “there might be a few score of others, maybe a few hundred, scattered here and there? They might awaken one by one, only to die, if less favorably situated than we happen to be. Perhaps thousands may have slept, like us, only to wake up to starvation!”
“There's no telling, of course,” he answered seriously. “Undoubtedly that may be very possible. Some may have escaped the great death, on high altitudes--on the Eiffel Tower, for instance, or on certain mountains or lofty plateaus. The most we can do for the moment is just to guess at the probabilities. And--”
“But if there are people elsewhere?” she interrupted eagerly, her eyes glowing with hope, “isn't there any way to get in touch with them? Why don't we hunt? Suppose only one or two in each country should have survived; if we could get them all together again in a single colony--don't you see?”