ond between Newman and the lady.

I wondered if the lady were really so lovely, possessed of such
goodness of heart, as glowing foc'sle report declared. Was she really
an incarnate Mercy in this floating hell? Did she really go forward
and bind up the men's hurts? Why did she not show herself on deck this
fine morning? I wanted to see this angel who was wedded to a devil.

I heard her voice first, ascending through the skylight. It thrilled
me. Not the words--she was but giving a direction to the Chinese
steward--but the rich, sweet quality of the voice. I, the foc'sle
Jack, whose ears' portion was harsh, bruising oaths, felt the feminine
accents as a healing salve. They stirred forgotten memories; they sent
my mind leaping backwards over the hard years to my childhood, and the
sound of my mother's voice. No wonder; I had scarce once heard the
mellow sound of a good woman's voice since I ran away to sea five years
before, only the hard voices of hard men, and, now and then, the shrill
voice of some shrew of the waterside.

She ascended from the cabin, and stepped out upon deck, and, as if
moving as far as possible from the harsh voices forward, came aft and
stood near the wheel. And at the first glance, I knew that foc'sle
report of the lady was not overdrawn, that the most glowing description
did ill justice to her loveliness.

Her age? Oh, twenty-four, perhaps. Beautiful? Aye, judged by any
standard. But it was not her youth, or the trimness of her figure, or
the mere physical beauty of her features that touched the hearts, and
made reverent the voices of rude sailormen. No; it was something
beyond, something greater, than the flesh that commanded our homage.

Once since have I seen a face that was like the face of Captain Swope's
wife--in a great church in a Latin country. It was a painting of the
Madonna, and the master who had painted it had given the Mother's face
an expression of brooding tenderness as deep as the sea, an expression
of pity and sympathy as wide as the world. You felt, as you looked at
the picture, that the artist must have known life, its sufferings and
sins.

It was a like expression in the face of the Captain's lady. She was no
pretty lass whose sweet innocence is merely ignorance. She was a woman
who had looked upon life; you felt that she had faced the black evil
and hideous cruelty in a man's world, and that she understood, and
forgave. You felt her soul had passed