" And he
fled from the room--from the house.

CHAPTER XXV

THE big ship issued from the Mersey into ugly waters--into the
weather that at all seasons haunts and curses the coasts of
Northern Europe. From Saturday until Wednesday Susan and
Madame Deliere had true Atlantic seas and skies; and the ship
leaped and shivered and crashed along like a brave cavalryman
in the rear of a rout--fighting and flying, flying and
fighting. Four days of hours whose every waking second lagged
to record itself in a distinct pang of physical wretchedness;
four days in which all emotions not physical were suspended,
in which even the will to live, most tenacious of primal
instincts in a sane human being, yielded somewhat to the
general lassitude and disgust. Yet for Susan Lenox four most
fortunate days; for in them she underwent a mental change that
enabled her to emerge delivered of the strain that threatened
at every moment to cause a snap.

On the fifth day her mind, crutched by her resuming body, took
up again its normal routine. She began to dress herself, to
eat, to exercise--the mechanical things first, as always--then
to think. The grief that had numbed her seemed to have been
left behind in England where it had suddenly struck her
down--England far away and vague across those immense and
infuriated waters, like the gulf of death between two
incarnations. No doubt that grief was awaiting her at the
other shores; no doubt there she would feel that Brent was
gone. But she would be better able to bear the discovery.
The body can be accustomed to the deadliest poisons, so that
they become harmless--even useful--even a necessary aid to
life. In the same way the mind can grow accustomed to the
cruelest calamities, tolerate them, use them to attain a
strength and power the hot-housed soul never gets.

When a human being is abruptly plunged into an unnatural
unconsciousness by mental or physical catastrophes, the
greatest care is taken that the awakening to normal life again
be slow, gradual, without shock. Otherwise the return would
mean death or insanity or lifelong affliction with radical
weakness. It may be that this sea voyage with its four days
of agitations that lowered Susan's physical life to a harmony
of wretchedness with her mental plight, and the succeeding
days of gradual calming and restoration, acted upon her to
save her from disaster. There will be those readers of her
story who, judging her, per