“Was I different?” he asked curiously.
“No, you were not,” and he thought he heard her add “Thank God!” beneath her breath.
“And were you different?”
“I don’t know. I never looked at myself; I was the seer, not the seen. I have always been like that.”
“Indigestion,” he said reflectively. “We eat too much on board ship, and the dinner was very long and heavy. I told you so, that’s why I’m taking—I mean why I wanted to take exercise.”
“And to go to sleep afterwards.”
“Yes, first the exercise, then the sleep. Miss Clifford, that is the rule of life—and death. With sleep thought ends, therefore for some of us your catastrophe is much to be desired, for it would mean long sleep and no thought.”
“I said that they were changed, not that they had ceased to think. Perhaps they thought the more.”
“Then let us pray that your catastrophe may be averted. I prescribe for you bismuth and carbonate of soda. Also in this weather it seems difficult to imagine such a thing. Look now, Miss Clifford,” he added, with a note of enthusiasm in his voice, pointing towards the east, “look.”
Her eyes followed his outstretched hand, and there, above the level ocean, rose the great orb of the African moon. Lo! of a sudden all that ocean turned to silver, a wide path of rippling silver stretched from it to them. It might have been the road of angels. The sweet soft light beat upon their ship, showing its tapering masts and every detail of the rigging. It passed on beyond them, and revealed the low, foam-fringed coast-line rising here and there, dotted with kloofs and their clinging bush. Even the round huts of Kaffir kraals became faintly visible in that radiance. Other things became visible also—for instance, the features of this pair.