p on
chairs and sofas and waited either for the storm to end or for the ship
to sink. If you've ever been in a storm at sea, you know the
feeling--that the next minute may bring calm and safety, or terror and
death.

Porter had tucked a rug around me, and I lay there, looking at the
others, wondering whether if an accident happened Delilah would face
death as gracefully as she faces everything else. Leila was very white
and shivery and clung to her father; it is at such times that she seems
such a child.

Aunt Frances was fussy and blamed everybody from the captain down to
Aunt Isabelle--as if they could control the warring elements. Surely
it is a case of the "ruling passion."

But while I am writing these things, I am putting off, and putting off
and putting off the story of what happened after the storm--not because
I dread to tell it, but because I don't know quite how to tell it. It
involves such intimate things--yet it makes all things clear, it makes
everything so beautifully clear, Roger Poole.

It was after the wind died down a bit that I made Porter take me up on
deck. The moon was flying through the ragged clouds, and the water was
a wild sweep of black and white. It was all quite spectral and
terrifying and I shivered. And then Porter said; "Mary, we'd better go
down."

And I said, "It wasn't fear that made me shiver, Porter. It was just
the thought that living is worse than dying."

He dropped my arm and looked down at me.

"Mary," he said, "what's the matter with you?"

"I don't know," I said. "It is just that my courage is all gone--I
can't face things."

"Why not?"

"I don't know--I've lost my grip, Porter."

And then he asked a question. "Is it because of Barry, Mary?"

"Some of it."

"And the rest?"

"I can't tell you."

We walked for a long time after that, and I was holding all the time
tight to his arm--for it wasn't easy to walk with that sea on--when
suddenly he laid his hand over mine.

"Mary," he said, "I've got to tell you. I can't keep it back and
feel--honest. I don't know whether you want Roger Poole in your
life--I don't know whether you care. But I want you to be happy. And
it was I who sent him away from you."

And now, Roger Poole, what can I say? What can _any_ woman say? I
only know this, that as I write this the sun shines over a blue sea,
and that the world is--different. There are still things in my heart
which hurt--but there are things, to