While the words passed his lips Robert seemed to live a year. Here was an opportunity of atonement for his idle and luxurious life. An hour ago he would have taken it gladly, but now—now, with Benita senseless on his breast, and that answer still locked in her sleeping heart? Yet Benita would approve of such a death as this, and even if she loved him not in life, would learn to love his memory. In an instant his mind was made up, and he was speaking rapidly.
“Thompson,” he said to the officer, “if I go, will you swear to take her in and her child?”
“Certainly, Mr. Seymour.”
“Then lay to; I am going. If any of you live, tell this lady how I died,” and he pointed to Benita, “and say I thought that she would wish it.”
“She shall be told,” said the officer again, “and saved, too, if I can do it.”
“Hold Mrs. Jeffreys, then, till I am out of this. I’ll leave my coat to cover her.”
A sailor obeyed, and with difficulty Robert wrenched free his hand.
Very deliberately he pressed Benita to his breast and kissed her on the forehead, then let her gently slide on to the bottom of the boat. Next he slipped off his overcoat and slowly rolled himself over the gunwale into the sea.
“Now,” he said, “pull Mrs. Jeffreys in.”
“God bless you; you are a brave man,” said Thompson. “I shall remember you if I live a hundred years.”