seaweed. Why did my father's description of his own love-tragedy
haunt me?

Before recalling the words that had fallen from my father in
Switzerland, I was a boy: in a few minutes afterwards, I was a man
with an awful knowledge of Destiny in my eyes--a man struggling with
calamity, and fainting in the grip of dread. My manhood, I say, dates
from the throwing up of that strip of seaweed. Winifred picked up the
weed and made a necklace of it, in the old childish way, knowing how
much it would please me.

'Isn't it a lovely colour?' she said, as it glistened in the
moonlight. 'Isn't it just as beautiful and just as precious as if it
were really made of the jewels it seems to rival?'

'It is as red as the reddest ruby,' I replied, putting out my hand
and grasping the slippery substance.

'Would you believe,' said Winnie, 'that I never saw a ruby in my
life? And now I particularly want to know all about rubies.'

'Why do you want particularly to know?'

'Because,' said Winifred, 'my father, when he wished me to come out
for a walk, had been talking a great deal about rubies.'

'Your father had been talking about rubies, Winifred--how very odd!'

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'and he talked about diamonds too.'

'THE CURSE!' I murmured, and clasped her to my breast. 'Kiss me,
Winifred!'

There had come a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered
with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who,
while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinising a sail
that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the
knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells,
and sees the knives, of the Lascar pirates just starting in pursuit.
As I took in the import of those innocent words, falling from
Winifred's bright lips, falling as unconsciously as water-drops over
a coral reef in tropical seas alive with the eyes of a thousand
sharks, my skin seemed to roughen with dread, and my hair began to
stir.

At first she resisted my movement, but looking in my eyes and seeing
that something had deeply disturbed me, she let me kiss her. 'What
did you say, Henry?'

'That I love you so, Winnie, and cannot let you go just yet.'

'What a dear fellow it is!' she said; 'and all this ado about a poor
girl with scarcely shoes to her feet.' Then, after an instant's
pause, she said: 'But I thought you said something very different. I
thought you said something about a curse, and _t