f her quietly in
the ladies' saloon (luckily it was empty) it is by no means certain she
would ever have reached England. I can't tell if a straw ever saved a
drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair
pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of
despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere mental
weariness--not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of complete
collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's stewardess,
who did not seem aware of other human agonies than sea-sickness, who
talked of the probable weather of the passage--it would be a rough night,
she thought--and who insisted in a professionally busy manner, "Let me
make you comfortable down below at once, miss," as though she were
thinking of nothing else but her tip--was enough to dissipate the shades
of death gathering round the mortal weariness of bewildered thinking
which makes the idea of non-existence welcome so often to the young.
Flora de Barral did lie down, and it may be presumed she slept. At any
rate she survived the voyage across the North Sea and told Mrs. Fyne all
about it, concealing nothing and receiving no rebuke--for Mrs. Fyne's
opinions had a large freedom in their pedantry. She held, I suppose,
that a woman holds an absolute right--or possesses a perfect excuse--to
escape in her own way from a man-mismanaged world.

* * * * *

What is to be noted is that even in London, having had time to take a
reflective view, poor Flora was far from being certain as to the true
inwardness of her violent dismissal. She felt the humiliation of it with
an almost maddened resentment.

"And did you enlighten her on the point?" I ventured to ask.

Mrs. Fyne moved her shoulders with a philosophical acceptance of all the
necessities which ought not to be. Something had to be said, she
murmured. She had told the girl enough to make her come to the right
conclusion by herself.

"And she did?"

"Yes. Of course. She isn't a goose," retorted Mrs. Fyne tartly.

"Then her education is completed," I remarked with some bitterness.
"Don't you think she ought to be given a chance?"

Mrs. Fyne understood my meaning.

"Not this one," she snapped in a quite feminine way. "It's all very well
for you to plead, but I--"

"I do not plead. I simply asked. It seemed natural to ask what you
thought."

"It's what I feel that matters. And I can't help my feeli