icitous about the drowned men and women whom
he had never known that Mrs Lorton gradually was made aware of the
presence of another mourner who was not a mute. She turned round and
beheld a back convulsed with emotion. Its grief went straight to her
heart, and, casting her own sorrow and her sense of etiquette to the
wind--which blew bracingly from the north-east--she tapped upon the
glass screen that bisected the shelter.

Burnham took no notice. He was too deeply involved in grief. So Mrs
Lorton knocked again, with all the vigour that incipient convalescence
gave to her. This time Burnham was startled, and turned a hollow face
upon her. They stared at each other through the intervening glass for a
moment in wild surprise, the tears congealing upon their cheeks.

Beyond Burnham Mrs Lorton saw the whirling white foam of the sea. Beyond
Mrs Lorton Burnham saw the neat villas of Westgate. It struck them both
as a tremendous moment, and they trembled.

Remember that they were very weak.

At last he, conceiving naturally that she had recognised and desired to
summon him, walked slowly round to her side of the shelter, and held out
to her a wavering hand.

"Good heavens!" he ejaculated. "The last person I--"

"You!" said Mrs Lorton. "How astonishing! What on earth--"

He seized the opening she gave him with all the ardour of the
whole-souled influenza patient.

"I have been ill," he said with a deep pathos, "very, very ill. My
symptoms were most extraordinary."

He sank down heavily at her side, and continued, "I doubt if any one has
endured such agony before. It began on a Sunday with--"

"So did mine," Mrs Lorton interrupted with some show of determination.
"You cannot conceive what it was like. I had pains in every limb, every
limb positively. The doctor--"

"Of course I went straight to bed," he remarked with firmness. "I knew
at once what was wrong. But mine was no ordinary case. Talk of
thumbscrews! Why--"

"For nights I tossed in agony," she went on with a poignant self-pity,
so much engrossed that she never noticed the brown boots which on other
occasions had so deeply offended her. "Morphia and eucalyptus were no--"

"He said it was pneumonia, double pneumonia," Burnham concluded
emphatically. "How I came through it I shall never know." His smile at
this point was wan, and seemed to deprecate existence. "I suppose there
is still some work for me to do. At the same time, I--"

"Mine was also double!"