erserk about Louis.

Panic came to her. The things she realized about marriage were that it
was irrevocable, and that it meant a frighteningly close proximity; and
in that swift vision of Louis's fight--even though it had been in
defence of her--she had realized that it was utterly impossible for
her to be with him for the rest of her life.

"Oh how could I? How can I? How can I be glittering and shining with a
man who is always crying? How can we be--be conquerors together when I
never, never think of him except as 'poor boy' or 'silly idiot'? Oh
no--no--I can't! I can't! Even if I do save him, what is there in that
for me? I want to shine--I daren't have hot, dirty, damp hands dragging
at me. I can't. I must be free, uncaught--"

The cabin became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates
and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his
appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the
part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had
substituted a changeling stuffed with sawdust.

"I must tell him. But it's so cruel of me. I'm cruel--but I must tell
him."

In the next cabin he began to sing, rather jerkily, a song everyone on
the ship was singing just then.

"Won't you come back to Bombombay?
Won't you come back to Bombombay?
I'm grieving, now you're leaving
For a land so far away.
So sad and lonely shall I be,
When you are far away from me."

It was not the tipsy singing she had heard in the morning; it was jumpy,
tuneless singing; she guessed that it was assisting in the process of
shaving, for she heard a few "damns" peppering the song, which suggested
that his shaky hand was wielding the razor badly. And with the song came
pity that swamped disgust and disillusion. It seemed so sad to her that,
when hope dawned upon him, he should celebrate it by singing a piece of
sentimental, however haunting, doggerel. To go there and tell him that
she, too, was going to break promises, to change her mind--it was
impossible. It was like breaking promises to a little child. Came a
blinding flash of self-realization.

"Marcella Lashcairn," she said, standing under the white flare of the
electric light and facing herself squarely in the little mirror, which
showed her two scornful grey eyes, "You're a hypocrite! You think it's
very splendid and grand to save a big, grown-up man from getting drunk.
That's only because you're a girl and are flattered at h