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 rated from her as if she had been upon another boat with all the depth of the Mediterranean between them; and his consequent suffering surprised him, it was so sharp. Two weeks earlier he could not have thought it possible that he would this soon be going about with something like an actual aching in his chest because a Frenchwoman, heretofore unknown in his life, preferred the society of her son and two elderly compatriots to his own.

Then when "the last night out" had come—that night so unbelievable during his early physical sufferings—and when she was again inaccessible at the bridge table, he began to feel desperate. He wrote a note consisting of the fevered inquiry, "What have I done?" and directed a steward to place it under her cabin door. After that he went out on deck and walked violently.

His pace and the vigour of it were such, indeed, that when he rounded the after corner of the ship's house and collided with a lady who was coming almost as rapidly from the opposite direction, he struck her so shrewdly that she staggered backward, and was in the act of falling when he sprang forward and caught her in his arms as the only means of keeping her upon her feet. It was Olivia Tinker.