ion on her part is
concerned. She will not be melodramatic, I do assure you."

"And the disguise--your dress?" inquired I.

He rose from the berth slowly, and, opening a portmanteau, drew from
it a cloth of white and red, fringed with gold. It was of beautiful
texture, and made into the form of a toga or mantle. He said: "I was a
seller of such stuffs in Colombo, and these I brought with me, because
I could not dispose of them without sacrifice when I left hurriedly. I
have made them into a mantle. I could go as--a noble Roman, perhaps!"
Then a slight, ironical smile crossed his lips, and he stretched out his
thin but shapely arms, as if in derision of himself.

"You will go as Menelaus the Greek," said I.

"I as Menelaus the Greek?" The smile became a little grim.

"Yes, as Menelaus; and I will go as Paris." I doubt not that my voice
showed a good deal of self-scorn at the moment; but there was a kind of
luxury in self-abasement before him. "Your wife, I know, intends to go
as Helen of Troy. It is all mumming. Let it stand so, as Menelaus and
Helen and Paris before there was any Trojan war, and as if there never
could be any--as if Paris went back discomfited, and the other two were
reconciled."

His voice was low and broken. "I know you exaggerate matters, and
condemn yourself beyond reason," he replied. "I will do as you say. But,
Dr. Marmion, it will not be all mumming, as you shall see."

A strange look came upon his face at this. I could not construe it;
and, after a few words of explanation regarding his transference to
the forward part of the ship, I left him. I found the purser, made the
necessary arrangements for him, and then sought my cabin, humbled in
many ways. I went troubled to bed. After a long wakefulness, I dozed
away into that disturbed vestibule of sleep where the world's happenings
mingle with the visions of unconsciousness. I seemed to see a man's
heart beating in his bosom in growing agonies, until, with one last
immense palpitation, it burst, and life was gone. Then the dream
changed, and I saw a man in the sea, drowning, who seemed never to
drown entirely, his hands ever beating the air and the mocking water.
I thought that I tried many times to throw him a lighted buoy in the
half-shadow, but some one held me back, and I knew that a woman's arms
were round me.

But at last the drowning man looked up and saw the woman so, and, with
a last quiver of the arms, he sank from sight. When he