"Does it matter how I feel?" she asked in a tone that cast a gloom over

his face. He answered with repressed violence which she did not expect:

"No, it does not matter, because I cannot go without you. I've told you

. . . You know it. You don't think I could."

"I assure you I haven't the slightest wish to evade my obligations," she

said steadily. "Even if I could. Even if I dared, even if I had to die

for it!"

He looked thunderstruck. They stood facing each other at the end of the

saloon. Anthony stuttered. "Oh no. You won't die. You don't mean it.

You have taken kindly to the sea."

She laughed, but she felt angry.

"No, I don't mean it. I tell you I don't mean to evade my obligations. I

shall live on . . . feeling a little crushed, nevertheless."

"Crushed!" he repeated. "What's crushing you?"

"Your magnanimity," she said sharply. But her voice was softened after a

time. "Yet I don't know. There is a perfection in it--do you understand

me, Roderick?--which makes it almost possible to bear."

He sighed, looked away, and remarked that it was time to put out the lamp

in the saloon. The permission was only till ten o'clock.

"But you needn't mind that so much in your cabin. Just see that the

curtains of the ports are drawn close and that's all. The steward might

have forgotten to do it. He lighted your reading lamp in there before he

went ashore for a last evening with his wife. I don't know if it was

wise to get rid of Mrs. Brown. You will have to look after yourself,

Flora."

He was quite anxious; but Flora as a matter of fact congratulated herself

on the absence of Mrs. Brown. No sooner had she closed the door of her

state-room than she murmured fervently, "Yes! Thank goodness, she is

gone." There would be no gentle knock, followed by her appearance with

her equivocal stare and the intolerable: "Can I do anything for you,

ma'am?" which poor Flora had learned to fear and hate more than any voice

or any words on board that ship--her only refuge from the world which had

no use for her, for her imperfections and for her troubles.

* * * * *

Mrs. Brown had been very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns were a

childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly. Their

resentment was very bitter. Mrs. Brown had to remain ashore alone with

her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no

greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathizer. And Mrs.

Brown, with a woman's quick power of observation and inference (the

putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which

she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship. The morose

steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell's

hearing. It was in the officers' mess-room at the end of a meal while he

lingered after putting a fruit pie on the table. He and the chief mate

started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the sallow

steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling upwards his

eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard a lot of that

sort of thing by that time. It was growing monotonous; it had always

sounded to him a little absurd. He struck in impatiently with the remark

that such lamentations over a man merely because he had taken a wife

seemed to him like lunacy.




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