She folds down the paper and reads, in a weak voice, a short paragraph:
"The Sea-Gull rescued one life-boat after it had drifted two days at the mercy of the wind and waves. It was filled with thirsty, famishing women and children. They reported that the boat had been on the point of sinking from too great a load, when the four men who were in it had leaped into the water, heroically resigning their only chance of life in favor of the weaker sex. There is no ground for hoping that either of these noble, manly hearts survived their self-sacrificing act, as none have been heard from since."
"Well?" Reine says, in a hushed voice, with a strange, prescient dread on her white face.
"Oh, my poor, bereaved girl, how can I tell you?" exclaims the frail invalid, the dew of womanly sympathy starting into her eyes.
And Reine, with a horrible weight pressing on her heart, gasps faintly:
"My husband——"
"His name appears in the list of the four who leaped into the water," Mrs. Odell replies in an awe-struck voice.
One cry, whose terrible despair pierces to the blue heavens, then blank silence. Reine has fallen forward, face downward, on the floor. For a brief space, time, love, sorrow, all the things of life, are blotted from her mind in a merciful semi-death.