e they
kill. She laid a steady hand on Jorgenson's sleeve and spoke quietly,
distinctly, urgently.

"You were on deck. What I want to know is whether I was heard?"

"Yes," said Jorgenson, absently, "I heard you." Then, as if roused a
little, he added less mechanically: "The whole ship heard you."

Mrs. Travers asked herself whether perchance she had not simply
screamed. It had never occurred to her before that perhaps she had. At
the time it seemed to her she had no strength for more than a whisper.
Had she been really so loud? And the deadly chill, the night that had
gone by her had left in her body, vanished from her limbs, passed out of
her in a flush. Her face was turned away from the light, and that
fact gave her courage to continue. Moreover, the man before her was so
detached from the shames and prides and schemes of life that he seemed
not to count at all, except that somehow or other he managed at times to
catch the mere literal sense of the words addressed to him--and answer
them. And answer them! Answer unfailingly, impersonally, without any
feeling.

"You saw Tom--King Tom? Was he there? I mean just then, at the moment.
There was a light at the gangway. Was he on deck?"

"No. In the boat."

"Already? Could I have been heard in the boat down there? You say the
whole ship heard me--and I don't care. But could he hear me?"

"Was it Tom you were after?" said Jorgenson in the tone of a negligent
remark.

"Can't you answer me?" she cried, angrily.

"Tom was busy. No child's play. The boat shoved off," said Jorgenson, as
if he were merely thinking aloud.

"You won't tell me, then?" Mrs. Travers apostrophized him, fearlessly.
She was not afraid of Jorgenson. Just then she was afraid of nothing and
nobody. And Jorgenson went on thinking aloud.

"I guess he will be kept busy from now on and so shall I."

Mrs. Travers seemed ready to take by the shoulders and shake that
dead-voiced spectre till it begged for mercy. But suddenly her strong
white arms fell down by her side, the arms of an exhausted woman.

"I shall never, never find out," she whispered to herself.

She cast down her eyes in intolerable humiliation, in intolerable
desire, as though she had veiled her face. Not a sound reached the
loneliness of her thought. But when she raised her eyes again Jorgenson
was no longer standing before her.

For an instant she saw him all black in the brilliant and narrow
doorway, and the next moment he had v