re
for? Come! or I shall go without you. Look at the clock; we have not a
moment to lose!"

It was useless to contend with her. Mrs. Crayford yielded. The two women
left the house together.

The landing-stage, as Mrs. Crayford had predicted, was thronged with
spectators. Not only the relatives and friends of the Arctic voyagers,
but strangers as well, had assembled in large numbers to see the ships
sail. Clara's eyes wandered affrightedly hither and thither among the
strange faces in the crowd; searching for the one face that she dreaded
to see, and not finding it. So completely were her nerves unstrung, that
she started with a cry of alarm on suddenly hearing Frank's voice behind
her.

"The _Sea-mew_'s boats are waiting," he said. "I must go, darling. How
pale you are looking, Clara! Are you ill?"

She never answered. She questioned him with wild eyes and trembling
lips.

"Has anything happened to you, Frank? anything out of the common?"

Frank laughed at the strange question.

"Anything out of the common?" he repeated. "Nothing that I know
of, except sailing for the Arctic seas. That's out of the common, I
suppose--isn't it?"

"Has anybody spoken to you since last night? Has any stranger followed
you in the street?"

Frank turned in blank amazement to Mrs. Crayford.

"What on earth does she mean?"

Mrs. Crayford's lively invention supplied her with an answer on the spur
of the moment.

"Do you believe in dreams, Frank? Of course you don't! Clara has been
dreaming about you; and Clara is foolish enough to believe in dreams.
That's all--it's not worth talking about. Hark! they are calling you.
Say good-by, or you will be too late for the boat."

Frank took Clara's hand. Long afterward--in the dark Arctic days, in the
dreary Arctic nights--he remembered how coldly and how passively that
hand lay in his.

"Courage, Clara!" he said, gayly. "A sailor's sweetheart must accustom
herself to partings. The time will soon pass. Good-by, my darling!
Good-by, my wife!"

He kissed the cold hand; he looked his last--for many a long year,
perhaps!--at the pale and beautiful face. "How she loves me!" he
thought. "How the parting distresses her!" He still held her hand; he
would have lingered longer, if Mrs. Crayford had not wisely waived all
ceremony and pushed him away.

The two ladies followed him at a safe distance through the crowd, and
saw him step into the boat. The oars struck the water; Frank waved his
c