the man who committed suicide?"

"He was introduced to me last night by Dr. Marmion," she replied, and
she shuddered again, though her face showed no remarkable emotion. She
had had a shock to the senses, not to the heart.

When I came to her on the deck, Justine was saying to her: "Madame, you
should not have come. You should not see such painful things when you
are not well."

She did not reply to this. She looked up at me and said: "A strange
whim, to die in those fanciful rags. It is dreadful to see; but he had
the courage."

I replied: "They have as much courage who make men do such things and
then live on."

Then I told her briefly that I held the packet for her, that I guessed
what was in it, and that I would hand it to her later. I also said that
he had written to me the record of last night's meeting with her, and
that he had left a letter which was to be made public. As I said these
things we were walking the decks, and, because eyes were on both of us,
I tried to show nothing more unusual in manner than the bare tragedy
might account for.

"Well," she said, with a curious coldness, "what use shall you make of
your special knowledge?"

"I intend," I said, "to respect his wish, that your relationship to him
be kept unknown, unless you declare otherwise."

"That is reasonable. If he had always been as reasonable! And," she
continued, "I do not wish the relationship to be known: practically
there is none.... Oh! oh!" she added, with a sudden change in her
voice, "why did he do as he did, and make everything else
impossible--impossible!... Send me, or give me the packet, when you
wish: and now please leave me, Dr. Marmion."

The last few words were spoken with some apparent feeling, but I knew
she was thinking of herself most, and I went from her angry.

I did not see her again before the hour that afternoon when we should
give the bodies of the two men to the ocean. No shroud could be prepared
for gunner Fife and able-seaman Winter, whose bodies had no Christian
burial, but were swallowed by the eager sea, not to be yielded up even
for a few hours. We were now steaming far beyond the place where they
were lost.

The burial was an impressive sight, as burials at sea mostly are. The
lonely waters stretching to the horizon helped to make it so. There was
a melancholy majesty in the ceremony.

The clanging bell had stopped. Captain Ascott was in his place at the
head of the rude draped bier. In the si