And there was something more than my own intolerable mental condition to depress me. I could not doubt that Alice Lee was dying. She might be spared for some weeks; she might even be spared to find a grave in Australia. But when I had looked at her after her fits of coughing that afternoon, and when I had taken a final glance at her as she lay sleeping, I could not doubt that her time was short, that whether or not she should live to reach Australia she would certainly never behold her native country again. Short as had been our association, I could not have loved her more had she been known to me and had she been dear to me all her life. I loved Mrs. Lee, but I loved Alice Lee more than I loved her mother. My grief was selfish, but then all grief is more or less so. When this girl dies, I thought to myself, what friends shall I have? Who will compassionate my loneliness as she does? Who will make me feel as she does, whilst my memory remains black, that I am not utterly solitary? I know that whilst she lives I shall have a friend, someone who will care for me, someone who will not lose sight of me when this voyage is ended and the homeless world is before me. But she will die before the voyage is ended, and what then will become of me? O God, take pity upon me! I cried out of the anguish of my soul; and, throwing myself upon my knees, I clasped my hands and prayed for mercy and for help to Him to whom Alice Lee had taught me to pray. The night was very quiet. The steerage was silent; one man I had observed reading at a table under the lamp; but the fine night, as I might suppose, detained his fellow-passengers on deck. There was a bright moon; the silver sheen lay upon the glass of the cabin porthole and so obscured it with misty radiance that the stars and the dark line of the horizon were invisible. The wind was fair and fresh, and the noise of the water washing past penetrated the silence. The ship rocked stately and slow; indeed it was true tropic sailing, with a tropic temperature in the cabin and a tropic night without, to judge by the glory of the moonlight upon the cabin window.