ng time."

Coxeter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "In fact"--he waited
a moment, and she came close up to him.

"Tell me," she commanded in a low voice, "tell me what you know. They
say I ought to put it all out of my mind, but I can think of nothing
else. Whenever I close my eyes I see the awful struggle that went on
round that last boat!" She gave a quick, convulsive sob.

Coxeter was dismayed. How wildly she spoke, how unlike herself she
seemed to-day--how unlike what she had been during the whole of their
terrible ordeal.

Already that ordeal had become, to him, something to be treasured. There
is no lack of physical courage in the breed of Englishmen to which John
Coxeter belonged. Pain, entirely unassociated with shame, holds out
comparatively little terror to such as he. There was something rueful in
the look he gave her.

"The last boat was run down in the fog," he said briefly. "Some of the
bodies have been washed up on the French coast."

She looked at him apprehensively. "Any of the people we had spoken to?
Any of those who were with us in the railway carriage?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say that one of the bodies washed up is that of the
person who sat next to you."

"That poor French boy?"

Coxeter shook his head. "No, no--he's all right; at least I believe he's
all right. It--the body I mean--was that of your other neighbour;" he
added, unnecessarily, "the man who made sweets."

And then for the first time Coxeter saw Nan Archdale really moved out of
herself. What he had just said had had the power to touch her, to cause
her greater anguish than anything which had happened during the long
hours of terror they had gone through. She turned and, moving as if
blindly, pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out some terrible
and pitiful sight.

"Ah!" she exclaimed in a low voice, "I shall never forgive myself over
that! Do you know I had a kind of instinct that I ought to ask that man
the name, the address"--her voice quivered and broke--"of his friend--of
that poor young woman who saw him off at the Paris station."

Till this moment Coxeter had not known that Nan had been aware of what
had, to himself, been so odious, so ridiculous, and so grotesque, a
scene. But now he felt differently about this, as about everything else
that touched on the quick of life. For the first time he understood,
even sympathized with, Nan's concern for that majority of human beings
who are born to suffering