She gave a little mirthless laugh. "But it will," she said; "it will. You'll remember me when she can't understand you, and my kisses when you're sick of hers, and my arms when she's asleep beside you. You won't think _then_ that it makes no difference. You won't say _then_ that she was the one chance for you. You'll remember then that a woman loved you whose love was all that you had dreamed. Maurice, Maurice, you're not the sort of man that makes a saint!" He turned to her and put out his hand. "I'm going," he said. "Good-bye!" She laid her left hand in it. Hers was quite cold, but she shivered as she touched him. "Will you come back to me ever?" she asked. He shook his head. "Never?" "Never, never!" "If you want me, you must say," she went on impassively. "It won't matter what I'm doing--I mean if I'm married, or anything. If you want me, I'll come to you. But you must say. Love ... ah! you don't know what it means!" He left her with a pressure of the hand, and she caught a glimpse of him as he groped his way towards the stairs. But she did not stir, nor try to stop him. IX Caragh sat with his back to the saloon skylight, watching the cloud-shadows racing over the soft green Irish coast. Between him and it was a heaving space of dark blue water, crested here and there with gleaming white. The gale of the night was blowing itself out, but the wind still sang against the spars that swung to and fro through a wider arc of the sky than most of the guests on board found compatible with an appearance at breakfast. Woolly flocks of white cloud came up from the Atlantic, raced through the clear blue overhead, and huddled down together behind the land. It was a day boisterous with the joy of life, but Caragh's face showed no appreciation of its quality. His chair slid forward and back with the rolling deck, but his eyes were fixed gloomily upon the green hills, and he paid no heed to his own movement. His sombre absorption gave him the appearance of being affected by the floundering seas; but he never suffered from sea-sickness and was grateful to the gale for having cleared the deck of the ship's jovial company. He wished to be by himself, and yet it was himself that he was most anxious to evade; it was from self-sickness that he was suffering. He had spoken the truth in telling Laura Marton that the faith in Lettice Nevern's eyes was his one hope of deliverance. He believed, if he could respond to that, even with the honest dishonesty which alone was possible--if he could, as he told her, "make a good girl's dreams come true"--that he might in time build up for himself an artificial constancy, and so regain his self-esteem.