German woman
nearly went into a fit from rage. "I shall have you thrown out into the
street."

Flora was not exactly thrown out into the street, I believe, but she was
bundled bag and baggage on board a steamer for London. Did I tell you
these people lived in Hamburg? Well yes--sent to the docks late on a
rainy winter evening in charge of some sneering lackey or other who
behaved to her insolently and left her on deck burning with indignation,
her hair half down, shaking with excitement and, truth to say, scared as
near as possible into hysterics. If it had not been for the stewardess
who, without asking questions, good soul, took charge of her quietly in
the ladies' saloon (luckily it was empty) it is by no means certain she
would ever have reached England. I can't tell if a straw ever saved a
drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair
pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures
of despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere
mental weariness--not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of
complete collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's
stewardess, who did not seem aware of other human agonies than
seasickness, who talked of the probable weather of the passage--it would
be a rough night, she thought--and who insisted in a professionally busy
manner, "Let me make you comfortable down below at once, miss," as
though she were thinking of nothing else but her tip--was enough to
dissipate the shades of death gathering round the mortal weariness of
bewildered thinking which makes the idea of non-existence welcome so
often to the young. Flora de Barral did lie down, and it may be
presumed she slept. At any rate she survived the voyage across the
North Sea and told Mrs Fyne all about it, concealing nothing and
receiving no rebuke--for Mrs Fyne's opinions had a large freedom in
their pedantry. She held, I suppose, that a woman holds an absolute
right--or possesses a perfect excuse--to escape in her own way from a
man-mismanaged world.

What is to be noted is that even in London, having had time to take a
reflective view, poor Flora was far from being certain as to the true
inwardness of her violent dismissal. She felt the humiliation of it
with an almost maddened resentment.

"And did you enlighten her on the point?" I ventured to ask.

Mrs Fyne moved her shoulders with a philosophical acceptance of all the
necessi