She had spoken to him in her cabin that night, pleading with him, kneeling to him, while the drunkards on deck made sail. Her whole world had lain in ruins; she had thought that nothing more could hurt her; but when she spoke the ruins flew about her, wounding her, cutting her to the quick. He had answered her brutally. His answer had come, as it were, set to the music of the drunkards above. It would not out of her head. All her nerves shook with it, as though the blow struck her in her face. He had sworn at her, jeered at her, called her a lump of cold batter, told her to get to the devil, told her that he was sick of the sight of her, that he had married her for her money, that if she gave him any more of her canting preaching he’d hit her one that she’d remember. Later in the night, as she lay crying at his side, he bade her for God’s sake to stop snivelling, so that he might get to sleep. As she could not stop, he had arisen, telling her that she might cry herself sick, but that he was going to Mrs. Inigo, a woman who wasn’t quite such a cold poultice. She had not stopped him. She could not stop him. He had gone from her; leaving her life too empty for her to wish even to kill herself. Another dreadful thing, still dreadful, although so much was numbed in her, was the meeting with her husband the next day. She had thought him some common stranger; that had been the dreadful thing. He had seemed vulgar to her; a person out of her circle; she could not bring herself to speak to him. All that she could do was to glance at his neck continually. It had a horrible fascination for her, this neck that the rope was laid for. She did not hate him. He was dead to her; that was all; the worst horror was when she remembered her love-days, seeing him now as he was. She bore her lot alone, shut up in her cabin, seldom venturing out. At times she would lie back, in a nervous crisis, clenching her fingers into her palms, shaking with the hate of Captain Margaret. He might, she thought, have spared her that scene at the Governor’s. But no; it was all his plan; all; from the very first; his plan to have her near him. That was his love for her, to have her near him, to poison her against her husband, to tempt her husband with another woman, to heap all these indignities, all these torments, so that he, the lover, might triumph. All the voyage he had been at it. Little things came back to her now; little tender, insinuating acts. They came over her in a shock of shame. She hated him, she hated him. And yet, for all her hate of him, she could not think of leaving the ship, nor of what her future was to be; that was all dead and blank to her. England was dead and blank to her. She could not go back to England, save as some wounded hare, with the blood glazing on her fur, limping to her form to die. She was stunned; she could not think. Her death in life would go on for a little; perhaps for a long while; it did not matter how.