Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
alone.
As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
darkness.
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