He always came back to the normal.

Had he sought purposely to divest himself of hope he could not have done it.

The ship was coming.
Its coming was as certain as the rolling in of the tide, only one had to wait longer for it.
Yet time passed, and there was no sign of a sail on the horizon.

His island was as lonely as if it were in the South Seas instead of the Atlantic.

He began to suspect that it was not really a member of any group, but was a far flung outpost visited but rarely.