“But what a God—what a God ...” shouted the woman with a wild cry. “To hide himself in a maze—and me too distracted to find out the way. Why, my tears ought to reach him, let alone my prayers. I’ve sacrificed so much for him—and he gives me over to this....” “This is terrible, yerce terrible,” said the priest. “My poor creature, this is not the right spirit in which to meet adversity. Put yourself in God’s hands, like a little child....” The woman dragged herself suddenly a yard or two from him. “Oh, you talker—you talker ...” she cried, and writhed upon the deck. “Listen,” said the priest in a commanding voice. “Kneel with me now, and pray to God. When we have prayed, I will take you to the doctor, and he will give you something to make you sleep.” “I won’t touch drugs,” said the woman. “And I don’t hold with that young doctor in brass buttons. If I pray now with you, will you promise that I shall be better in the morning?” “Yes,” said the priest. It was spoken, not out of his faith, but because that seemed the only way to put an end to the scene. And when he prayed, in a musical clerical voice, he prayed not out of his heart, but out of his sense of what was fitting. The stars bent their wise eyes upon the wise sea and bore witness that the priest’s prayer never reached heaven’s gate. “Now you feel better, do you not?” he asked, when he had said all that had occurred to him, and intoned a loud Amen, as if to give the prayer an upward impetus. “No,” sobbed the woman. “Who are you? What is your name?” “I am Elizabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust’s maid,” she replied, and staggered in a lost way into the darkness of the companion-way. “To-morrow it will be better,” the priest called after her. And wished that he could think so. The world smiled next morning, when the sports began again. Elizabeth Hammer was invisible, probably concealed in some lowly place suitable to her position. The sea was silver, the sky blazed blue, the sun smiled from its height, like a father beaming upon his irresponsible family. Mrs. Paul Rust looked incredible in a pale dress, designed for peculiarity rather than grace; pink roses sprigged it so sparsely as to give the impression of birth-mark afflictions rather than decorations. I am not sure whether the feather in her hat was more like an explosion or a palm tree. The gardener rolled upon a deck-chair with three children using him as a switch-back railway. Theresa was smiling from her top curl down to her toes. Even the suffragette was talking about the transmigration of souls to the fourth officer. Everything on the surface was highly satisfactory, and, on board ship, nothing except the surface matters a bit. The priest had a leaky mind. He never poured out all that was in it, but he could not help letting a certain proportion of its contents escape. He paused in his daily walk of thirty times round the deck, and found a seat beside Mrs. Paul Rust.