both human beings. She gave a cry and flung
her arms about the other's neck, clinging to her like a person falling
from a great height, the tears at last streaming down her face.

CHAPTER XLI

HOME AGAIN

The trip home passed like a long shuddering bad dream in which one
waits eternally, bound hand and foot, for a blow which does not fall.
Somehow, before the first day was over, an unoccupied berth was found
for Sylvia, in a tiny corner usually taken by one of the ship's
servants. Sylvia accepted this dully. She was but half alive, all her
vital forces suspended until the journey should be over. The throbbing
of the engines came to seem like the beating of her own heart, and
she lay tensely in her berth for hours at a time, feeling that it was
partly her energy which was driving the ship through the waters. She
only thought of accomplishing the journey, covering the miles which
lay before her. From what lay at the end she shrank back, returning
again to her hypnotic absorption in the throbbing of the engines. The
old woman who had offered to share her berth had disappeared at the
first rough water and had been invisible all the trip. Sylvia did not
think of her again. That was a recollection which with all its sacred
significance was to come back later to Sylvia's maturer mind.

The ship reached New York late in the afternoon, and docked that
night. Sylvia stood alone, in her soiled wrinkled suit, shapeless from
constant wear, her empty hands clutching at the railing, and was the
first passenger to dart down the second-class gang-plank. She ran to
see if there were letters or a telegram for her.

"Yes, there is a telegram for you," said the steward, holding out a
sealed envelope to her. "It came on with the pilot and ought to have
been given you before."

She took the envelope, but was unable to open it. The arc lights
flared and winked above her in the high roof of the wharf; the crowds
of keen-faced, hard-eyed men and women in costly, neat-fitting
clothing were as oblivious of her and as ferociously intent on their
own affairs as the shabby, noisy crowd she had left in Naples,
brushing by her as though she were a part of the wharf as they bent
over their trunks anxiously, and locked them up with determination. It
seemed to Sylvia that she could never break the spell of fear which
bound her fast. Minute after minute dragged by, and she still stood,
very white, very sick.

She was aware that some one s