XII.

MORE VAGARIES.

MOST benign and beautiful was the morning. The "Empire State" emerged from the fog, and left it, a rosy cloud, astern. The chasing waves sparkled and danced for joy. The sun was up, fresh and unstained as yesterday. Night, that had changed so much, had not dimmed him. With the same power and brightness as for innumerable past centuries his glorious glance coloured the grey sky blue. Helwyse, (he was at the stern taffrail again,) looked at the marvellous sphere with unwinking eyes, till it blurred and swam before him and danced in coloured rings. It warmed his face, but penetrated no deeper. Looking away, black suns moved before his eyes everywhere,

and the earth looked dim and shabby, as though

blighted by a curse.

Helwyse had not slept, partly from disinclination to the solitude of his berth, partly because the thought of awakening dismayed him. Nevertheless, he could scarcely believe in what had happened now. He stood on the very spot; here was the semi-circle of railing, the camp-stools, the white cabin-wall against which he had leaned. But the blackness of night had so utterly passed away, that it seemed as if the deed done in it must in some manner have vanished likewise. What is fact at one time looks unreal at another. It must be associated with all times and moods before it can be fully comprehended and accepted.

Glancing down at the deck, Helwyse saw there the cigar he had been smoking the night before, flattened out by the tread of a foot; and lying close beside it, a sparkling ring. He picked it up; it was a diamond of purest

water, curiously caught beween the mouths of two little serpents, whose golden and black bodies, twisted round each other, formed the hoop. Realising after a moment from whose finger it must have fallen, he had an impulse to fling it far into the sea; but his second thought was not to part from it. True, the idea of its former owner must always be hateful to his murderer; but the bond between their souls was closer than that between man and wife, and more indissoluble: and of such an unnatural union this ring was a fair emblem. Unnatural though the union were, it seemed to Helwyse at the time better than total solitude.

He felt heavy and inelastic, averse to himself, but still more to society. He wished to see men and women, yet not to be seen of them. He had used to be ready in speech and willing to listen; now, no subject interested him save one, on which his lips must be forever closed. When the sun had made himself thoroughly at

home on earth and in heaven, Helwyse went to his state-room, feeling unclean from the soul out. While making his toilet, he took care to leave the window-blind up, that he might at any moment see the blue sky and water, and the bright shore with its foliage and occasional houses. He shrank from severing even for an instant his communication with the beneficent spirit of nature. Yet, nature could not comfort him; in his extremest need he found her most barren. He had been wont to rejoice in her as the creature of his own senses, but when he asked her to sympathise with his pain, she laughed at him—the magnificent coquette ! and bade him (since she was only his reflection) be content with his own sympathy. Truly, if man and nature be thus allied, and God be but developed man, then is self-sufficiency the sole virtue worth cultivating, and idolatry must begin at home!

His efforts to improve his appearance were

not satisfactory; the loss of his toilet articles embarrassed him not a little, and he, moreover, lacked zest to enter into the business with his customary care. And what he did was done— not merely for his own satisfaction as heretofore-but with an eye to the criticisms of other people. His naive unconscious independence had got a blow. Having done his best he went out, pale and heavy-eyed, the diamond ring on his finger.

The passengers had begun to assemble in the cabin. It seemed to Helwyse, as he entered, that one and all stared at him with suspicious curiosity. He half expected to behold an accuser rise up and point a dreadful finger at him. But, in truth, the sensation he created was nothing more than common; it was his morbid sensitiveness that for the first time took note of it. He had been accustomed to look at himself as at a third person, in whose faults and successes he was alike interested; but, although