“Your maid seems to be in a shocking state of health,” he said. “She suffers from indigestion,” replied Mrs. Rust. “Some fool of a doctor has told her that she has cancer. She has quite lost her head over it.” “At any rate she appears to be in great pain,” said the priest, who considered that indigestion was rather too unclothed a word for ordinary use. “And pain is a terrible thing, is it not?” “No,” said Mrs. Rust. “You mean that you consider it salubrious for the soul?” “No,” said Mrs. Rust. “Then I wonder in what way you consider pain desirable?” Mrs. Rust, who had meant nothing beyond contradiction, shut her eyes and looked immovably subtle. The priest changed the subject. He had a real gift for changing the subject. “Have you made the acquaintance of that dark young man who acts as the ship’s gardener?” he asked. “An excellent young man,” said Mrs. Rust, immediately divining that the priest did not approve of him. “Yerce, yerce, no doubt an excellent young man,” agreed the priest mechanically. “But I have reason to believe that his morals are not satisfactory.” “Good,” said Mrs. Rust. “I do not think he is really married to that aggressive young woman he calls his wife.” “Good,” said Mrs. Rust. She did not approve of such irregularities any more than the priest did, but she disapproved of disapprobation. The priest, being constitutionally incapable of argument, and yet unable to broaden his view, was left wordless. But an interruption mercifully rescued him from the necessity of attempting a reply. Elizabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust’s maid, appeared at the companion door. Her eyes were fixed hungrily upon the sea. There was a race about to be run, and the starter stood ready to say the word. But Elizabeth Hammer brushed past him and walked across the empty strip of deck. She climbed the rail as though she were walking upstairs, and dropped into the sea. “Hammer,” barked Mrs. Rust hoarsely, as she heard the splash. That word broke the spell. A woman shrieked, and Captain Walters shouted, “Man Overboard.” The suffragette was not a heroine. What she did was undignified and unconscious. The heroine should remove her coat, hand her watch to a friend, send her love to a few relations, and bound gracefully into the water. The suffragette, fully clothed, tumbled upside down after Elizabeth Hammer. No noble impulse prompted her to do it. She did not know of her intention until she found herself in the water, and then she thought, “What a fool!” She could not swim. The _Caribbeania_ looked as distant as heaven, and as high. She felt as if she had been dead a long time since she saw it last. She paddled with her feet and hands like a dog, her mouth was full of water and of hair. She had never felt so abased in her life, she seemed crushed like a wafer into the sinking surface of the nether pit. For centuries she wrestled with the sea, sometimes for years and years on end a wave tore at her breath. She never thought of Elizabeth Hammer.