I did not ask her what she meant; I seemed to understand perfectly.
“Yes,” I said.
“But I tell you I knew it was you,” she repeated. “I did not know—I did not suspect until the moment before the collision, before the launch came in sight—then, all at once, I knew.”
“Yes. That was when I knew.”
She turned and gazed at me.
“YOU knew?” she gasped, hysterically. “Why—what do you mean?”
“I can't explain it. Just before your canoe broke through the fog I knew, that is all.”
It was unexplainable, but it was true. Call it telepathy or what you will—I do not know what it was—I am certain only that, although I had not recognized her voice, I had suddenly known who it was that would come to me out of the fog. And she, too, had known! I felt again, with an almost superstitious thrill, that feeling of helplessness which had come over me that day of the fishing excursion when she rode through the bushes to my side. It was as if she and I were puppets in the hands of some Power which was amusing itself at our expense and would have its way, no matter how we might fight against it.
She spoke as if she were struggling to awaken from a dream.
“But it can't be,” she protested. “It is impossible. Why should you and I—”