To Forbes, on a distant ship in midocean the same moon was spreading the same path straight to him. He stared into its shifting glamour till his eyes were bewitched. He could see Persis walking on the water in the boudoir cap and the shimmering thing she wore that morning.
They were thinking of each other, longing for each other, and the space between them was widening every moment.
It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and the multitudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to be left in an armory.
The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life.
The ache of longing that thrilled the night world thrilled Enslee's heart, too; and he crept close to her, his adoration, his wife, the only soul on earth he deeply loved. He set his cheek against hers and clenched her in his arms fiercely. And immediately he encountered that hopeless antipathy, though all she said was a faintly petulant "Don't, please!"
It struck him in the face like a little fist. He moved aloof from her in abject humiliation and thought hard, took out a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, puffed restlessly, threw the cigarette over the rail, and a moment later took out another. There was no need for words. The air throbbed with Persis' detestation of the voyage. The sailing-master passed. Willie called to him:
"Svendsen!"
"Put about and make for home."
"I beg pardon, sir."