He struggled to calm himself, that he might master and appreciate all the significance of the position in which he was placed by the sudden death of Conway. But his moods were wild and hurrying; the play of emotion was quick and painful. He saw his wife in her grief; he saw her wrestling, with no eye but her child’s upon her, with the anguish that filled her; he felt her loneliness: he felt the cruel hopelessness that weighed in her heart as lead; he felt, above all, the dreadful sense of degradation which must attend her reflections upon the death of her husband, Conway; upon the wretched, miserable life she had led with him; upon the complete and bitter reversal of the sole end for which she had married him. The barrier that divided them was gone. Could there be any scruple now to hold him back from her? If there yet lingered one feeling of delicacy to prompt him to delay his confession for a little, until the dead was buried, until something of the horror of the sudden death had yielded to time, should it not be removed by the knowledge of her misery, which he had it in his power to dissipate and turn to gladness? Why should she weep? Why should she feel one instant of pain, when he could change her tears to smiles, her grief to joy? He stole to the door of the room she was in and listened. He heard her sobbing, and that sound vanquished his last hesitation. He turned the handle gently and entered. She was on her knees beside the sofa, her arms twined about Nelly, her face buried in the child’s lap. She started, looked at him, and rose slowly to her feet. He approached and stood before her. “Will you not trust me as a friend?” he said, in a voice a little above a whisper. She tried to answer him, but her sobs choked her voice. He seated himself and took Nelly on his knee, and, whilst he smoothed the child’s hair, continued: “There _is_ hope, there _is_ comfort for you and this little one. Check your sobs and listen to me. I can give you comfort, for I have known what it is to lose one that is dearer to me than my heart’s blood, to lose her and to find her again. She was my wife, and I left her to go to sea. The ship I sailed in was wrecked, and for many days I lay consumed with hunger and thirst in an open boat, seeing miserable creatures like myself dying around me one by one. And when I was rescued my memory was gone; I could not remember my own name, my home, the wife I had left, the country I had sailed from. But the voice of God one day directed me to leave Australia and go to England. I reached London, and there a man spoke to me of Hanwitch, a name familiar and dear to me for my wife’s sake. And when I came to Southbourne, the beloved old village gave me back my memory. I knew whom I had come to seek, and what I had lost. They told me that my wife thought me dead, and was married and lived with my child here--in this road--in that house yonder! O Dolly! O wife!”