rred and uttered a low moan. Armitage sprang back and
looked around guiltily. Only the screaming sea-gulls were there to
witness his discomfiture, yet his face had the expression of one
detected in an unworthy action. Again Grace moaned and stirred as if in
pain. He stood irresolute, embarrassed, not knowing what to do to help
her, trying to feel that he didn't care, surly and ill-tempered because
he felt contempt for himself. What was this woman's suffering to him?
She belonged to the class he now hated, the detested plutocracy upon
which he had declared war. The money she spent on her finery and
pleasures was no doubt gotten by cheating such poor fellows as he out of
their rights. Let her have her share of hard knocks. He chuckled to
himself as he reflected on life's ironies. Only a few brief hours ago,
on the luxuriously appointed liner, she was everything, he was nothing.
She was the grand lady, the pampered cabin passenger; he was the
despised stoker, hardly to be counted among human beings. Suddenly what
an astounding revolution! A cataclysm, and all was changed--distinctions
of birth, education, and wealth were instantly abolished. Now they were
merely two helpless human beings cast away on a deserted island in the
lonely mid-ocean, one dependent upon the other, one no better than the
other. They had returned to primeval conditions. In what way was she his
superior now?

Thus arguing to himself, he took fresh courage and drew nearer. She was
certainly pretty, there was no getting away from that, and he--was a
man!

Lying there, pale, soaked, bedraggled, Grace looked the picture of utter
misery. Of the artificial aids to good looks which women in their
vanity love to employ, not one remained, yet even with every adjunct of
self-adornment gone she was still beautiful. The exuberant spirits and
pride of bearing were no longer there, only a sad, wistful, pallid
loveliness that was even more potent in its appeal than the radiant,
gay, fashionably gowned, proud beauty who had attracted his gaze when,
from his place of concealment among the ventilators, he had gloomily
watched the brilliant scene on the promenade-deck.

She made no attempt to move. Still stunned by the awful calamity which
had so swiftly overtaken the steamer, her ears still ringing with the
despairing cries of her friends as they were swept to their deaths, her
brain was a blank. She could not think or reason. Every sense seemed
paralyzed. She felt