termittent fever has laid many of the fishermen low, so that their
help may, for all they yet can know, be sorely needed.

Fabian, who has been delayed in many ways, is almost the last to leave
the house. Hurrying now to the doorway, he is stopped by a slight
figure, that coming up to him in the gloom of the night, that rushes in
upon him from the opened hall-door, seems like some spirit of the storm.

It is Portia. Her face is very white, her lips are trembling, but her
eyes are full of a strange, feverish fire.

"May I go, too? Do not prevent me," she says, in an agitated tone,
laying her hand upon his arm. "I _must_ go, I cannot stay here alone;
thinking, thinking."

"You!" interrupts he; "and on such a night as this! Certainly not. Go
back to the drawing-room at once." Involuntarily he puts out his hand
across the doorway, as though to bar her egress. Then suddenly
recollection forces itself upon him, he drops his extended arm, and
coldly averts his eyes from hers.

"I beg your pardon," he says; "Why should I dictate to you? You will do
as you please, of course; by what right do I advise or forbid you?"

Oppressed by the harshness of his manner and his determined coldness,
that amounts almost to dislike, Portia makes no reply. When first he
spoke, his words, though unloving, had still been full of a rough regard
for her well-being, but his sudden change to the indifferent tone of an
utter stranger had struck cold upon her heart. Cast down and
disheartened, she now shrinks a little to one side, and by a faint
gesture of the hand motions him to the open door.

As though unconscious, or cruelly careless of the wound he has
inflicted, Fabian turns away from her and goes out into the sullen,
stormy night, and, reaching the side-path that leads direct through the
wood to the shore, is soon lost to sight.

Upon the beach dark forms are hurrying to and fro. Now and then can be
heard the sound of a distant signal-gun; small knots of fishermen are
congregated together, and can be seen talking anxiously when the lurid
lightning, flashing overhead, breaks in upon the darkness.

There is terrible confusion everywhere. Hurried exclamations and shrill
cries of fear and pity rise above the angry moaning of the wind, as now
and then a faint lull comes in the storm; then, too, can be heard the
bitter sobs and lamentations of two women, who are clinging to their
men, as though by their weak arms they would hold them from batt