Mary sank into her chair with the paper. There was the staring black headline, but she could hardly believe it. The Lusitania gone? The great ship she knew so well, on which she and Stefan had met, gone! Lying in the ooze, with fish darting above the decks where she had walked with Stefan. Those hundreds of cabins a labyrinth for fish to lose their way in--all rotting in the black sea currents. The possible loss of life had not yet come home to her. It was inconceivable that there would not have been ample time for every one to escape. But the ship, the great English ship! So swift--so proud! Dropping the paper, she walked slowly across the garden and the lane, and found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile, trying to still the turmoil of memories that rose within her. The Lusitania gone! It seemed like the breaking of the last link that bound her to the past. All the belief, all the wonder of that time were already gone, and now the ship, her loveship, was gone, too, lost forever to the sight of men. She saw again its crowded decks, saw the lithe, picturesque figure of the young artist with the eager face bending over her-- “Won't you be perfectly kind, and come for a walk?” She saw the saloon on her engagement night when she sang at the ship's concert. What were the last words she had sung? “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty-- Love's a stuff will not endure.” Alas, how unconsciously prophetic she had been. Nothing had endured, neither love, nor faith, nor the great ship of their pilgrimage herself. Other memories crowded. Their honeymoon at Shadeham, the sweet early days of their studio life, her glorious pride in his great painting of love exalted.... The night of Constance's party, when, after her singing, her husband had left his place by Miss Berber and crossed the room so eagerly to her side. Their first weeks at the Byrdsnest--how happy they had been then, and how worshipfully he had looked at her the morning their son was born. All gone. She had another baby now, but he had never seen it--never would see it, she supposed. Her memory traveled on, flitting over the dark places and lingering at every sunny peak of their marriage journey. Their week in Vermont! How they had skated and danced together; how much he seemed to love her then! Even the day he sailed for France he seemed to care for her. “Why are we parting?” he had cried, kissing her. Yes, even then their marriage, for all the clouds upon it, had seemed real--she had never doubted in her inmost heart that they were each other's.