He told me that the day I left Dieppe news came of the wreck of a fishing-smack having floated into the harbor of St. Valéry. The police were on the alert, and went at once to inspect the boat. It had capsized, and had drifted ashore, after knocking about on the high seas no one could say how many days; but it bore the name of a fisherman who had been seen in the neighborhood about ten days before. There was nothing in the boat, of course, that could give any indication as to what had become of its owner or how the accident had occurred. About two days later the body of a woman was washed ashore almost on the same spot; the police, still on the _qui-vive_, went down to see it, and at once telegraphed for my uncle. The body was lying at the _morgue_ of St. Valéry; it was already decomposing, but the work of destruction was not far enough advanced to admit of doubt as to the identity. The long, dark hair was dripping with the slime of the sea, and tangled like a piece of sea-weed; but the admiral’s eyes had no sooner glanced at the face than he recognized it. I can write this after an interval of many months, but even now I cannot recall it without feeling, almost as vividly as at the moment, the pang that seemed to cleave my very life in two. My uncle had said: “It doesn’t all end here!” and those words, I believe, preserved me from suicide. They kept singing, not in my ears, but within me, and seemed to be coming out of all the common sounds that were jarring and dinning outside. The very ticking of the clock seemed to repeat them: “It does not all end here.” It did, so far as my happiness went. I was a blighted man for ever. The dark mystery of the flight and the death would never be solved on this side of the grave. The sea had given up its dead, but the dead could not speak. I was alone henceforth with a secret that no fellow-creature could unriddle for me. I must bear the burden of my broken life, without any hope of alleviation, to the end. The name of De Winton was safe now. No blot would come upon it through the follies or sins of her who had beamed like a sweet, sudden star upon my path, and then gone out, leaving me in the lonely darkness. Why should I chronicle my days any more? They can never be anything to me but a dreary routine of comings and goings, without joy or hope to brighten them. The sun has gone down. The stone has fallen to the bottom; the trembling of the circles, as they quiver upon the surface of the water, soon passes away, and then all is still and stagnant again. * * * * *