and the sweet
salt air filtered in, infinitely soothing and refreshing. She began to
go about the room, picking up Jim's clothes, and putting the place in
order. Once or twice her face twitched with pain, and once she stopped
and pressed Jim's coat to her heart with both hands, as if to stop a
wound, but she did not cry, and presently began her usual preparations
for bed in her usual careful fashion. The cherry-coloured gown had been
put away, and Julia, in an embroidered white kimono almost stiff enough
to stand alone, was putting her rings into their little cases when Jim
came in. She looked at him over her shoulder.

"Where have you been, Jim?" she asked quietly, noticing his white face,
his tumbled hair, and a certain disorder in his appearance. Jim did not
answer, and after a puzzled moment Julia repeated her question.

"Up on deck," Jim said, a bitter burst of words breaking through his
ugly silence. He dropped into a chair, and put his head in his hands.

Julia watched him for a few moments in silence, while she went on with
her preparations. She wound her little watch and put it under her
pillow; she folded the counterpanes neatly back from both beds, and got
out her slippers. Then she sat down to put trees into the little satin
slippers she had been wearing, and carried them to the closet.

Suddenly Jim sat up, dropped his hands, and stared at her haggardly.

"Julia," said he hoarsely, "I've been up there thinking--I'm going mad,
I guess--"

He stopped, and there was silence. Julia stood still, looking at him.

"Tell me," Jim said, "was it Mark?"

The hideous suddenness of it struck Julia like a bodily blow; she stood
as if she had been turned to ice. A great weight seemed to seize her
limbs, a sickening vertigo attacked her. She had a suffocating sense
that time was passing, that ages were going by in that bright, glaring
room, with the sea air coming in a shuttered window, and the two beds,
with their smooth white pillows, so neatly turned down--Still, she could
not speak--not yet.

"Yes, it was Mark," she said tonelessly and gently, after a long
silence. "I thought you knew."

"Oh, my God!" Jim said, choking. He flung his hands madly in the air and
got on his feet. Then, as if ashamed, through all the boiling surge of
his emotions, at this loss of control, he rammed his hands into the
pockets of his light overcoat, and began to pace the room.
"You--you--you!" he said, in a sort of wail, and in an