-if she saw him again.--I promised; I swore. A hundred times over
I promised and a hundred times over I failed, and her love changed to
fear, fear and dread, and a shrinking of flesh. She was a frail thing,
and she lived in terror of `_that man_.' In terror of him she died.
When she drew her last breath he was drunk, lying helpless downstairs--"

"Oh, don't!" gasped Katrine painfully. "_Don't_ tell me! I didn't
ask.--I don't want to hear... Don't remind yourself--"

"_Remind_! Do you think I can forget? I am not harrowing myself by
conjuring up sleeping ghosts. That kind of ghost never sleeps. It
makes no difference to me whether I speak of it, or am silent. I have
told you for--" he turned towards her with a twisted smile, "_your own
sake_! You are a good girl, but crude. When you have had time to think
for yourself, you'll make a fine woman. You've been living in a shell.
_Let yourself go_! Forget what you've been taught, and think things out
for yourself. Meantime, I appreciate your good intentions, but--_leave
me alone_!" Suddenly his eyes blazed. "Great Heavens! If She couldn't
help me, what can _you_ do!"

He wheeled round and strode away, leaving Katrine to pass through some
of the most poignant moments of her life. Never before had she come
into such intimate touch with human misery. Compared with this anguish
of remorse, Martin's grief over the loss of his girl wife seemed a
sacred and beautiful thing. Never before had she realised at once so
overpowering a longing to help, and so profound a conviction of
helplessness. To be of use to a soul in such straits, one must needs
have suffered also, have struggled, and overcome: have risen to a height
far beyond that on which she now stood. Katrine knew it, acknowledged
it to her own soul, with a humility which was in itself a prayer.

She made her way to the quietest part of the deck, and leaned over the
rail, trembling with emotion. Twenty-six years of placid, uneventful
existence, of calm looking on at life, and then suddenly here she was,
in the maelstrom, each new day bringing with it some new and poignant
emotion! She felt dazed, bewildered; filled with humiliation.

When presently Bedford strolled up nonchalant and smiling, a cigarette
in his mouth, his expression changed swiftly as he saw her, and Katrine
flinched before his glance. Could she have seen herself she would have
been astonished, as he was, at the beauty of the pale, t