“He was introduced to me last night by Dr. Marmion,” she replied, and she shuddered again, though her face showed no remarkable emotion. She had had a shock to the senses, not to the heart.
When I came to her on the deck, Justine was saying to her: “Madame, you should not have come. You should not see such painful things when you are not well.”
She did not reply to this. She looked up at me and said: “A strange whim, to die in those fanciful rags. It is dreadful to see; but he had the courage.”
I replied: “They have as much courage who make men do such things and then live on.”
Then I told her briefly that I held the packet for her, that I guessed what was in it, and that I would hand it to her later. I also said that he had written to me the record of last night’s meeting with her, and that he had left a letter which was to be made public. As I said these things we were walking the decks, and, because eyes were on both of us, I tried to show nothing more unusual in manner than the bare tragedy might account for.
“Well,” she said, with a curious coldness, “what use shall you make of your special knowledge?”
“I intend,” I said, “to respect his wish, that your relationship to him be kept unknown, unless you declare otherwise.”
“That is reasonable. If he had always been as reasonable! And,” she continued, “I do not wish the relationship to be known: practically there is none.... Oh! oh!” she added, with a sudden change in her voice, “why did he do as he did, and make everything else impossible--impossible!... Send me, or give me the packet, when you wish: and now please leave me, Dr. Marmion.”
The last few words were spoken with some apparent feeling, but I knew she was thinking of herself most, and I went from her angry.
I did not see her again before the hour that afternoon when we should give the bodies of the two men to the ocean. No shroud could be prepared for gunner Fife and able-seaman Winter, whose bodies had no Christian burial, but were swallowed by the eager sea, not to be yielded up even for a few hours. We were now steaming far beyond the place where they were lost.
The burial was an impressive sight, as burials at sea mostly are. The lonely waters stretching to the horizon helped to make it so. There was a melancholy majesty in the ceremony.