"I now little fear any personal results of fate's perversities. From hunted sense of unmerited outlawry I have passed to that of 'ermine' function. Aware that my discreet silences and acts may conserve the ends of justice, I will do nothing in contempt of such high ministry.
"In times of more than wonted assurance I would not accept complete vindication. There must be exact justice meted for an outraged law. Father can await his boy's final clearance from guilty suspicions in patient abeyance to public weal. Mother will approve—her high sense of duty must—so unselfish were her plans—yes, it will be all right with Mother!"
Strangely affected, Oswald looks upward, intensely curious at lowering clouds obscuring the sky. Then follows a sense of unutterable loneliness and bewilderment. Soon a softened radiance steals through the storm blackness. There is suggestion of mild reproof in that image reflection. With reverent, submissive mien Oswald quits the deck.
The diary thus continues:
"Weeks are spent at sea without stop. Only at long intervals does the sick man leave his room. Each appearance shows greater weakness, but no lack of cheerful emotion. The intellectual sense seems to quicken, as if through transparent fleshly gauze that expectant soul lay open to 'prick of light.' There cannot be much longer prolonging of the unequal contest. To sympathetic interest he is so considerately thankful that it is doubtful who is the comforter. Still 'raptured with the world,' he surveys life's receding shores, as if booked for its more luminous, harmonious antitype.
"The younger traveler is all attention, anticipating every want. His kindnesses, delicately unobtrusive, yet frank and hearty, leave no reactive friction.
"I am charmed with such refined tact. Discreet scruples would be set aside but for sure conviction that no want of the invalid is unobserved or slighted.
"One day neither passenger appears on deck. This excites no comment. For over a week I catch only brief views of the younger man. It is then casually remarked:
"'The consumptive is dead.'
"I learn where the body lies, and that on the following day there is to be a burial at sea. I am admitted to the room where stretches mortal remnant of once complex, interwoven humanity.