Emily sensed that the sailor's mind was groping around the appearance of Paul earlier in the evening. She feared that it would do him harm to let his mind rest on this and that it would be better if she could induce him to sleep.
"Don't you think if I turned down the light you might be able to sleep again?"
The suggestion startled him.
"No, no, nurse. Plaze lave th' light. I'll be afther stayin' awake for th' Ould Man—that's me own skipper."
"But he has been here. He——"
"Mother av God!" he cried. He seized her hand and held it in great stress. "Thin yez saw him, too! Yez saw Lavelle." His eyes, filled with awe, leaped from Emily's face to the open doorway and back again. "'Tis me warnin', colleen, t' be snuggin down—t' make everythin' tight!"
The thing she had wished not to do she had done unwittingly. She had turned his poor brain back to its memory of Paul's father.
"Did yez hear him shpake t' me? Did he shpake t' annybody else?"
"It was not the Captain Lavelle you think. It was his son."
"His son? Not 'Prince' Lavelle?"