At this he looked up at her, started to his feet, and his face was eager and impassioned with emotion not communicable, for who can expound the workings of the diseased mind?
"Tell me," he cried, and she saw what Hardy had also seen—the baleful sparkle of mania in his eyes, "you're fresh from the sea, and God may have sent you to me. Tell me!"
She could not speak. Her consolatory phrase had exhausted imagination, and her heart refused its sanction to the mate's humane idea, that it was good to keep up the poor fellow's spirits.
"Tell me!" he repeated, and he advanced a step and his eyes devoured her face.
"God will comfort you and help you," she replied, not knowing what to say.
He sighed, and turning his head fastened his eyes upon the little bed, then looked at her again, this time with his painful expression of superiority, the air of a man whose soul is exalted by contemplation of something of heavenly importance divulged to him and to him only, and wearing this face, he opened the door and she passed out, which was lucky for Hardy, because had the captain gone first he would have found the mate standing close and listening.
The captain remained in his cabin. The others stood by the table, and the western light, rich and red as a deep-bosomed rose, flowed down upon them through the open skylight.
"Poor man! Poor man!" the girl exclaimed. "I fear that what I've said will create a delusion; he will think I know where his child is."
"His moods are like the dog-vane," said Hardy. "I could not hear what passed."