'I've travelled too,' she said. 'Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher's meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.' Again she nodded. 'It's a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea's lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea--perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines--dull grey. All this time I know something's going to happen.' 'I know. Something going to happen,' she whispered. 'Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down--like fire-irons--and then two most awful yells. They're more like hoots, and I know--I know while I listen--that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them--in most awful pain. Do you understand?' 'I ought to. Go on.' 'That's the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, "My friend! All is lost!" Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.' He panted and wiped his forehead. 'So that is your night?' she said. 'That is my night. It comes every few weeks--so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.' 'Get sentence? D'you mean _this_?' She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. '"Notice" I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.' She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes. 'Listen now!' said she. 'I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.' 'Just men? Do they speak?' 'They try to. Their faces are all mildewy--eaten away,' and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. 'It's the Faces--the Faces!' 'Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.' 'Ah! But the place itself--the bareness--and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run.... I know what's coming too. One of them touches me.' 'Yes! What comes then? We've both shirked that.' 'One awful shock--not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!' 'As though your soul were being stopped--as you'd stop a finger-bowl humming?' he said. 'Just that,' she answered. 'One's very soul--the soul that one lives by--stopped. So!' She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. 'And now,' she whined to him, 'now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have just one?' 'No,' said Conroy, shaking. 'Let's hold on. We're past'--he peered out of the black windows--'Woking. There's the Necropolis. How long till dawn?' 'Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.' 'And how d'you find that this'--he tapped the palm of his glove--'helps you?'