had got no such ideal room as they had in
the Norumbia. It was, as Mrs. March graphically said, a basement room.
It was on the north side of the ship, which is a cold exposure, and if
there had been any sun it could not have got into their window, which
was half the time under water. The green waves, laced with foam, hissed
as they ran across the port; and the electric fan in the corridor moaned
like the wind in a gable.

He felt a sinking of the heart as he pushed the state-room door open,
and looked at his wife lying with her face turned to the wall; and he
was going to withdraw, thinking her asleep, when she said quietly, "Are
we going down?"

"Not that I know of," he answered with a gayety he did not feel. "But
I'll ask the head steward."

She put out her hand behind her for him to take, and clutched his
fingers convulsively. "If I'm never any better, you will always remember
this happy, summer, won't you? Oh, it's been such a happy summer! It has
been one long joy, one continued triumph! But it was too late; we were
too old; and it's broken me."

The time had been when he would have attempted comfort; when he would
have tried mocking; but that time was long past; he could only pray
inwardly for some sort of diversion, but what it was to be in their
barren circumstance he was obliged to leave altogether to Providence. He
ventured, pending an answer to his prayers upon the question, "Don't you
think I'd better see the doctor, and get you some sort of tonic?"

She suddenly turned and faced him. "The doctor! Why, I'm not sick,
Basil! If you can see the purser and get our rooms changed, or do
something to stop those waves from slapping against that horrible
blinking one-eyed window, you can save my life; but no tonic is going to
help me."

She turned her face from him again, and buried it in the bedclothes,
while he looked desperately at the racing waves, and the port that
seemed to open and shut like a weary eye.

"Oh, go away!" she implored. "I shall be better presently, but if you
stand there like that--Go and see if you can't get some other room,
where I needn't feel as if I were drowning, all the way over."

He obeyed, so far as to go away at once, and having once started, he
did not stop short of the purser's office. He made an excuse of getting
greenbacks for some English bank-notes, and then he said casually that
he supposed there would be no chance of having his room on the lower
deck changed for some