The journey to the coast port where the steamer would call was accomplished in a motor ride of three days. Even to the dying and little-regarding Lucy this was in striking contrast to the three-weeks to four-weeks' journey up-country in her novitiate; with its crushing fatigues, discomforts and frequent dangers. No more skulls and skeletons of recent raids, no more intrusive lions, no need to fall among soldier ants, no water famines and atrocious smells; no tedious waiting in hot sun or drenching rain, while an unstable tent was being fumblingly put up and a camp bed put together. When the motor halted for the night Lucy was transferred by kind hands, as in a dream to a clean, sweet, cool couch in a decent bedroom. When it was morning, after a breakfast she scarcely seemed to taste, she was placed in a flying-bed—as the motor seemed—and so the dream journey went on till she was aware of being in a boat and then hoisted up into the air in a bed, and finally put to rest in a cool cabin. Dream figures would pass through this half-real environment. John Baines seemed sometimes to stand by her bed or help her into the motor; Maud became confused with Ann, but surely a much gentler Ann? There was Brother Bayley, looking for her to read slowly through the Book of Exodus, so that he might translate it, phrase after phrase, into Kagulu....

Once on the great steamer of the Deutsch Ostafrikansche Linie there seemed a ray of hope. They had deck cabins allotted to them. Two German Staff officers pretended they were just as comfortable on the tier below, and it would be a pleasure to help in Mrs. Brentham's recovery. She was quite a personage in the history of East Africa.... The steamer's captain, himself a married man, was kindness embodied. He broke through any regulations there might be to the contrary and had a section of the deck screened off opposite their cabins, so that no other passengers might pass through this open-air, shaded parlour in which the sick woman lay on a couch in a half-dream, even in a happy dream. Her day-bed or couch was screwed to the deck so that it would not be jarred or dislodged by movements of the vessel. Here she could lie all day or all night; her husband and her sister-in-law—such a formal term should not have been applied to Maud, she said; "sister in very truth"—could take their meal alongside where she lay.

At Unguja there came on board the new British Agent, Sir Edward Walrond, of the Foreign Office, to take farewell of Brentham since the latter could not leave his wife. He seemed to pass in and out of Lucy's dream—-a pleasantly cynical person who only expressed sympathy with Roger by a hand-grip and laughed away the idea of Mrs. Brentham not being able to land at Naples and see the sights there, "with Ted Parsons to take you round—he is becoming very Pompeian in manner, I'm told." ... Walrond sends on board all the fruit and delicacies he can think of, which might tempt Mrs. Brentham's appetite.

Archdeacon Gravening, who married her to John and then to Roger, comes off to see her. He is quite the old man now, the veteran of the Anglican Mission always there whatever Missionary Bishops come and go, always writing down Bantu languages, always trying to kill some secret sorrow of his own. He is alone with Lucy, kneels down for a few minutes by her day-bed, takes her hand, prays silently, says aloud: "My poor, poor child: I pray with all my heart you may surmount this weakness and live to be loved by your children. Think sometimes, when you are well and happy in England, of the lonely old man who married you to your good husband. I always said Brentham had done the right thing."

Then he lays some flowers between her hands that the Anglican Sisters have sent her. Lucy in her dream thinks they are marrying her again to Roger, and laughs at the absurdity of their not knowing she has been his faithful wife for—for—it is all so confusing—oh, ever so many years....

Out in the open sea, the fresh boisterous air of he monsoon gives a flickering stimulation to the enfeebled brain and body, even causes a certain irritability and impatience, rare to her gentleness. "Roger! Can't they take me quickly home? Can't they make the ship go faster?..."

"My darling, she is going at a splendid rate; we shall be at Aden in four days. Aden! You remember Aden? Where we took Emilia Bazzard with us to spend that day, and saw the cisterns? I want you to get ever so much better in those four days, because I must leave you then...." Hastens to add, as her hold on his hand tightens: "Oh, only for a couple of hours whilst Maud takes my place, because I want to pay off our four Somalis on shore. If I gave them all their money on the ship they might gamble it away or have it stolen. You remember the Somalis? Our old faithfuls—been with us for—what is it? Eighteen years. Wonderful! They travelled down with us from Magara—often carried you out of the motor or into the boat. Every day they come for your news."

But she is not listening.... "Roger!"

"Yes, dear?"

"I don't want to get off at Naples, and I don't want you or Maud to leave me at Naples: I want to go on and on in this steamer till we reach England.... And, Roger! If I die before we get there, don't throw me into the sea as they generally do with people who die on ... board ... ship ... take me on with you to England ... take me home, won't you? Then I shan't mind dying. We've all got to die some day ... that's what makes it all so sad.... I can't believe there can come an end to love, not love like mine for you; but it's horrible to think of lying at the bottom of the sea, and you perhaps in a grave on shore...."