“I was,” I said.
“I sometimes thought that you might,” he exclaimed. “Alas! Alas!”
I had been overwhelmed with joy as the truth dawned upon me—the truth that I had found him. I had forgotten our mutual plight. “Never mind,” I whispered. “We may get away somehow; and at least we can be together.”
He answered nothing, but helped me lift my head.
“How came you alone in that boat?” he asked.
“It is a long story,” I replied, shuddering as I gazed at the waves that were thundering on the beach before us. “I will tell it later.”
“You have been long upon the water?”
“Only since last night,” I said; and then gazing about me suddenly, I cried: “And you—you have been here all these years!”
“All these years,” he answered.
“And alone?”