s noticed it, and doubtless spoke
of it among themselves. He could not understand their dialect, but he
feigned them saying respectfully compassionate things. Then he gnashed
his teeth again, and cursed his folly. When the bell rang for supper he
found himself very hungry, and ate heavily. After that he went out in
front of the cabin, and walked up and down, thinking, and trying not
to think. The turmoil in his mind tired him like a prodigious physical
exertion.

Toward ten o'clock the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescent
that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows
and wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in
flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came
and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the water
was reflected on their faces, and showed them to each other.

"Well, I never saw anything like this before. Looks like hell; don't
it?" said the officer.

"Yes," said Mavering. "Is it uncommon?"

"Well, I should say so. I guess we're going to have a picnic."

Mavering thought of blueberries, but he did not say anything.

"I guess it's going to be a regular circus."

Mavering did not care. He asked incuriously, "How do you find your
course in such weather?"

"Well, we guess where we are, and then give her so many turns of the
wheel." The officer laughed, and Mavering laughed too. He was struck by
the hollow note in his laugh; it seemed to him pathetic; he wondered if
he should now always laugh so, and if people would remark it. He tried
another laugh; it sounded mechanical.

He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began to
dream. A face came up out of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as in
that picture of Vedder's which he calls "Memory," but the hair was not
blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes
were like it. "Horrible! horrible!" he tried to shriek, but he cried,
"Alice, I love you." There was a burglar in the room, and he was running
after Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists
fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long,
washing sound like water.

Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves. The boat
was pitching frightfully. He struggled out into the saloon, and saw that
it was five o'clock. In five hours more it would be a day since he told
Alice that he loved her; it now