Of all the ship’s company, Olivia was the most to be pitied, for she was in the worst hell. Her soul had been bruised in the stalk; all that made life for her had been taken from her violently. She could not think. When she rose up an image rose up with her. If she shut her eyes, it was there; if she looked out over the sea, it was there still: the image of the room ashore; the fruit plates, the smell of wine, the men standing guiltily, the sheet of creased letter, with its fine, tremulous writing. All of it she saw. It was always with her. When she lay down it was there; when she slept it was heavy upon her, like the trance of a sick man. Sometimes, in spite of her will, against her nature, it played itself over to her in her mind, like a farce, a stupid farce, ending in tragedy, in one stunning blow, crushing out sense, as it had crushed her in life. Her husband would be there, rude and common--rude to her, common before all those men--stripping away the cloaks her love had wrapped about him. Her husband, the flaming young love, the man she had chosen, was before her, acting as she had once seen a drunken man act when dragged by his wife out of a beer-shop. She had loved that, given herself to that. Then Howard’s words, clubbing home the meaning of her husband’s rudeness. That horrible flash of insight, of intuition, which made the guilt apparent; that was harder to bear than Howard’s words, more terrible, now that it returned to her. All along the memories of her married life were headlands, promontories, projecting blacknesses, unexplained, irritating; the unanswered questions which had puzzled her. Thus and thus her husband had acted in the past, queerly, she had thought, even then, not as she would have had him act, not as a knight would have acted, not as the men she had known would have acted. The acts had puzzled her, they had frightened her; but she had explained them, she had told herself that men were different, and that she loved this man. Now there came a light, a sudden meteor. The black capes and headlands glared out upon her, lit up, one after the other, in a baleful vista, a marching, illuminated army of witnesses, glaring out his guilt, one after the other, day after day, night after night, a sleepless company. They seemed to shout to her, tossing the words one from the other, in her disordered mind, “If he returns to England, he will be hanged.” He had said that he had loved her; but that seemed ages ago; and he had tricked her into this, deceived her at every turn, lied to her, cajoled others into lying to her, all the time amusing himself, laughing, pretending, a common thing, a man with a mind like a footman’s. At first, nerving herself, she had tried to talk with him, willing to forgive, only asking, for her own part, an explanation. She would have been content with that. She would have been almost happy had he come to her like an erring boy, asking her to count him merely that.