“Tell that man,” said Sylvia, her lips moving stiffly, “to take me out to the ship that is to leave for America this morning—­and now—­this minute, I may be late now!”

After a short impassioned colloquy, the loafer turned to her and reported:  “He says if he took you out, you couldn’t git on board.  Them big ships ain’t got no way for folks in little boats to git on.  And he’d ask you thirty lire, anyhow.  That’s a fierce price.  Say, if you’ll wait a minute, I can get you a man that’ll do it for—­” Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Helene had followed, and now broke through the line of ill-smelling loungers.  Mrs. Marshall-Smith took hold of her niece’s arm firmly, and began to draw her away with a dignified gesture.  “You don’t know what you are doing, child,” she said with a peremptory accent of authority.  “You are beside yourself.  Come with me at once.  This is no—­”

Sylvia did not resist her.  She ignored her.  In fact, she did not understand a word that her aunt said.  She shook off the older woman’s hand with one thrust of her powerful young arm, and gathering her skirts about her, leaped down into the boat.  She took out her purse and showed the man a fifty-lire bill.  “Row fast!  Fast!” she motioned to him, sitting down in the stern and fixing her eyes on the huge bulk of the liner, black upon the brilliance of the sunlit water.  She heard her name called from the wharf and turned her face backward, as the light craft began to move jerkily away.

Felix had come up and now stood between Mrs. Marshall-Smith and her maid, both of whom were passionately appealing to him!  He looked over their heads, saw the girl already a boat-length from the wharf, and gave a gesture of utter consternation.  He ran headlong to the edge of the dock and again called her name loudly, “Sylvia! Sylvia!” There was no mistaking the quality of that cry.  It was the voice of a man who sees the woman he loves departing from him, and who wildly, imperiously calls her back to him.  But she did not return.  The boat was still so close that she could look deeply into his eyes.  Through all her tumult of horror, there struck cold to Sylvia’s heart the knowledge that they were the eyes of a stranger.  The blow that had pierced her had struck into a quivering center of life, so deep within her, that only something as deep as its terrible suffering could seem real.  The man who stood there, so impotently calling to her, belonged to another order of things—­things which a moment ago had been important to her, and which now no longer existed.  He had become for her as remote, as immaterial as the gaudy picturesqueness of the scene in which he stood.  She gave him a long strange look, and made a strange gesture, a gesture of irrevocable leave-taking.  She turned her face again to the sea, and did not look back.