“We’ve been together in strange things,” Bellair explained. “And now you see, our friend is gone.”
The door was open between their cabins, but Bellair was not called. Once he heard the child cry, but it was quickly hushed.... He thought it must be near morning at last, and went on deck. He was not suffering, except from lassitude, deep languor and numbing strangeness that Fleury was not near him—that the woman was not sitting in her place forward.... It was just after midnight, the moon still high, the weather the same. ... He was not seen. Three men were seated smoking in the lee of one of the engine-room funnels, the light from the dining-saloon on their knees. The Doctor joined them, and said presently:
“... It’s a bit deep for me. They’ve been in an open boat ten days. Old Stackhouse, well-known down here, died of thirst the fourth or fifth day, but these two and the infant have lived through it. The preacher looked all right, but seems to have suffered a fatal case of happiness since we lifted him aboard. The two knew it was coming apparently, and arranged for me to be absent.... It appears that they made a sort of pilgrimage to Mecca out of thirst and starvation, and got away with it——”
Bellair withdrew softly.
In the long next forenoon when he could not rise, he wished he had gone into that open door, when he was on his feet last night. Sometimes half-dreamily he wished he were back in the open boat, because she was always there. Something had taken establishment in his character from that ten days. She had never failed—in light or dark, in the twilights of dawn and evening, in moon and star and sunlight—always there; disclosing leisurely some new aspect of beauty for him. He understood now that one does not begin to see clearly any object until one is attracted to it—that all the cursory looking at things around the world will not bring them home to the full comprehension.
... He could call to her, but it was like telephoning. He had never liked that, and beside he was not the master of his voice. It would not go straight, but lingered in corners, broke pitifully—so that he knew it frightened her—and the meanings in his mind which he could not speak, pressed the tears out of his eyes.... Then there was pain. His body astonished him. He had merely been weak and undone last night, but to-day.... And he knew that she was suffering, not from any sound from her cabin, but because she did not come. Then they had to feed the child. This filled him with a rebellion so sharp that it recalled him to full faculties for a second. He had to smile at his absurdity.
The second day it was the same, but the third Bellair arose; and when she heard his step, her call came. It was still early morning. He found the child before he looked into her face.
“I am ashamed to be so weak,” she said. “But to-day—a little later—he said I could rise. We are to be on deck for a half-hour after dinner, he told me.”
“The little Gleam——” said Bellair....