The Island of Regeneration
A young woman is cast ashore a Pacific island that is uninhabited -- save for a man she finds, incapable of speech and savage, who appears to be European.
Approx. 82,114 words.
all things indeed, but human happiness as a rule turns on things so small that the investigator and promoter thereof generally overlook them. And we know not the significance of the little until upon some desert island we are left with only that.
Washed, fed, and dressed -- for it is astonishing the difference that the neat coils in which she arranged her hair made in her appearance -- and now in her right mind, she rose to her feet. As she did so, as an experiment, she handed the man the little silver-backed mirror. He stared into it and again uttered that cry of surprise. Then he turned it around as if to look on the other side. Then he looked again and still again. She took it from him unresisting; his eyes full of strange terror. Life was full of surprises for him that day. He had not only been touched by a woman, but he had looked at a man as well.
She put the mirror into her waist and then looked at her watch. By a miracle it was still running, and in a panic lest it should run down and sh