is possible you are mistaken. I can not believe Miss Standish would
do that. We shall soon know. Two boats are gone, and a third lowering."
He was hurrying away, throwing the last words over his shoulder.

Alan made no movement to follow. His brain cleared itself of shock, and
a strange calmness began to possess him. "You are quite sure it was the
girl at my table?" he found himself saying. "Is it possible you might be
mistaken?"

"No," said the woman. "She was so quiet and pretty that I have noticed
her often. I saw her clearly in the starlight. And she saw me just
before she climbed to the rail and jumped. I'm almost sure she smiled at
me and was going to speak. And then--then--she was gone!"

"I didn't know until my wife screamed," added the man. "I was seated
facing her at the time. I ran to the rail and could see nothing behind
but the wash of the ship. I think she went down instantly."

Alan turned. He thrust himself silently through a crowd of excited and
questioning people, but he did not hear their questions and scarcely
sensed the presence of their voices. His desire to make great haste had
left him, and he walked calmly and deliberately to the cabin where Mary
Standish would be if the woman was mistaken, and it was not she who had
leaped into the sea. He knocked at the door only once. Then he opened
it. There was no cry of fear or protest from within, and he knew the
room was empty before he turned on the electric light. He had known it
from the beginning, from the moment he heard the woman's scream. Mary
Standish was gone.

He looked at her bed. There was the depression made by her head in the
pillow. A little handkerchief lay on the coverlet, crumpled and twisted.
Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the reading table. Then he
saw her shoes and her stockings, and a dress on the bed, and he picked
up one of the shoes and held it in a cold, steady hand. It was a little
shoe. His fingers closed about it until it crushed like paper.

He was holding it when he heard someone behind him, and he turned slowly
to confront Captain Rifle. The little man's face was like gray wax. For
a moment neither of them spoke. Captain Rifle looked at the shoe
crumpled in Alan's hand.

"The boats got away quickly," he said in a husky voice. "We stopped
inside the third-mile. If she can swim--there is a chance."

"She won't swim," replied Alan. "She didn't jump in for that. She is
gone."

In a vague and detached so