‘I will speak to the steward,’ said Mrs. Lee, and, throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she smiled at me and quitted the berth.
‘We will go over the names I have written down this afternoon,’ said Alice. ‘It may be that you will not know your own name if you see it! But, supposing you should see it and remember it! There are many things I shall think of to try. And, Agnes, we must not forget to ask God to help us and to bless our efforts.’
‘God?’ I repeated, and I looked at her.
A startled expression came and went in her eyes. ‘Lift up your veil, dear,’ said she; ‘I wish to see your face.’
I raised the veil, and directed my gaze fully at her.
‘Can it be,’ said she in a low, sweet voice, ‘that you have forgotten the sacred name of God?’
‘No,’ I answered; ‘I have not forgotten the name of God. Tell me——’ I paused.
‘It is so! How strange!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yet God must live in the memory too. It is hard to realise. Oh, Agnes, this brings your loss home to me as nothing else could. Lonely indeed you must be if you do not feel that you are being watched over, and that your Heavenly Father is with you always.’
Her eyes sank, and she fell into a reverie; her lips moved, and she faintly smiled. I continued to watch her, but within me there had suddenly begun a dreadful conflict. I pronounced the word ‘God,’ but I could not understand it, and the struggle of my spirit rapidly became a horror, which, even as my companion sat with her eyes sunk, faintly smiling and her lips moving, caused me to shriek aloud and bury my face in my hands.
In a moment I felt her arm round my neck; I felt the pressure of her cheek to mine; and I heard her voice murmuring in my ear.