Then Jennie looked abroad over the boundless expanse of dazzling blue sea, leaping and sparkling under the light of a radiant blue sky. It was splendid, glorious, but blinding to vision just out of the shadows of the stateroom and cabin, and so Jennie closed her eyes to recover them, and sat with them closed for some moments. At this hour it was very quiet on deck. Only the sounds of the ship’s movements were heard. Jennie, with her tired eyes shut, sat there in calm content.
“Oh! I am going mad! I am going mad! It has taken shape at last—or is this—delirium tremens? I—must not—drink so much!”
It was a low, husky, shuddering voice that uttered these strange words in Jennie’s hearing.
She opened her eyes at the sound, looked up and saw——
Kightly Montgomery, her husband, within a few feet of her, staring in horror upon her, while he supported himself in a collapsed state against the bulwarks of the ship. The face that confronted her was ashen, ghastly, awe-stricken, yet defiant, as with the impotent revolt of a demon.
Jennie returned his glare with a gaze of amazement and perplexity.
And so they remained spellbound, staring at each other, without moving or speaking, for perhaps a full minute.
Jennie was the first to recover herself. A moment’s reflection enabled her to understand the situation—that Kightly Montgomery, under his new name and with his new wife, was her fellow passenger on the Scorpio. This was clear enough to her now.
She was also the first to break the spell of silence, though it cost her an effort to do so, and her voice quivered, and she lowered her eyes as she said:
“You seem to take me for an optical illusion.”