“Has anything happened to you, Frank? anything out of the common?”
Frank laughed at the strange question.
“Anything out of the common?” he repeated. “Nothing that I know of, except sailing for the Arctic seas. That’s out of the common, I suppose—isn’t it?”
“Has anybody spoken to you since last night? Has any stranger followed you in the street?”
Frank turned in blank amazement to Mrs. Crayford.
“What on earth does she mean?”
Mrs. Crayford’s lively invention supplied her with an answer on the spur of the moment.
“Do you believe in dreams, Frank? Of course you don’t! Clara has been dreaming about you; and Clara is foolish enough to believe in dreams. That’s all—it’s not worth talking about. Hark! they are calling you. Say good-by, or you will be too late for the boat.”
Frank took Clara’s hand. Long afterward—in the dark Arctic days, in the dreary Arctic nights—he remembered how coldly and how passively that hand lay in his.
“Courage, Clara!” he said, gayly. “A sailor’s sweetheart must accustom herself to partings. The time will soon pass. Good-by, my darling! Good-by, my wife!”