ld,
surging, raging memory.

"With what person did you live in Forty-second Street?" I yelled across
the water.

"Miss Bertha Nugent," she replied.

A fire seemed to blaze within me. Standing on tiptoe I fairly
screamed: "Bertha Nugent! Where is she?"

The answer came back: "Here!" And when I heard it my legs gave way
beneath me and I fell to the deck. I must have remained for some
minutes half lying, half seated, on the deck. I was nearly stupefied by
the statement I had heard.

I will now say a few words concerning Miss Bertha Nugent. She was a
lady whom I had known well in New York, and who, for more than a year,
I had loved well, although I never told her so. Whether or not she
suspected my passion was a question about which I had never been able
to satisfy myself. Sometimes I had one opinion; sometimes another.
Before I had taken any steps to assure myself positively in regard to
this point, Miss Nugent went abroad with a party of friends, and for
eight months I had neither seen nor heard from her.

During that time I had not ceased to berate myself for my inexcusable
procrastination. As she went away without knowing my feelings toward
her, of course there could be no correspondence. Whatever she might
have suspected, or whatever she might have expected, there was nothing
between us.

But on my part my love for Bertha had grown day by day. Hating the city
and even the country where I had seen her and loved her and where now
she was not, I travelled here and there, and during the winter went to
the West Indies. There I had remained until the weather had become too
warm for a longer sojourn, and then I had taken passage in the
_Thespia_ for New York. I knew that Bertha would return to the city in
the spring or summer, and I wished to be there when she arrived. If,
when I met her, I found her free, there would be no more delay. My life
thenceforth would be black or white. And now here she was near me in a
half-wrecked steamer on the wide Atlantic, with no companion, as I
knew, but her maid, Mary Phillips.

I now had a very distinct recollection of Mary Phillips. In my visits
to the Nugent household in Forty-second Street I had frequently seen
this young woman. Two or three times when Miss Nugent had not been at
home, I had had slight interviews with her. She always treated me with
a certain cordiality, and I had some reason to think that if Miss
Nugent really suspected my feelings, Mary Phillips had given