“I prayed for hours, it seemed, after we were dashed upon this shore, that you might live and that I might die.  The knowledge that you saved me through mistake, that you were battling so long and so bravely all through the night for the one you cherished more than all in the world, made me pray from the first that I could be dead before you discovered the horrid error.  You picked me up when the crash came and I was too terrified to even think of crying aloud in protest.  Then we were in that awful, awful water.  It was not until hours afterward that I felt we might escape find that I should have to face your grief.”  He reached up and clasped her hand.

“Don’t—­don’t talk like that now,” he groaned.  “I hated you this morning, but—­God, it is a relief to have you here to share all this with me.  God threw us into the sea and He has saved us.  I would to God I could have gone down with—­with her, but—­but—­” and he broke down, his head falling upon his outstretched arms at her feet.  A deep sob from Lady Tennys caused him to lift his haggard eyes to hers.  “It would have been so much better than to live without her,” he cried.

“Why did you not let me go when you found who I was?” she cried almost fiercely.  “I wanted to drown, I was hungry to go to the bottom, to be washed away to the end of the ocean, anywhere but here with you when you thought you were saving her.  You had forgotten that I existed until that awful moment in the breakers.  I heard her cry out to you as we went overboard.  All through the night I heard that cry of ‘Hugh!  Hugh!’ It was worse than the worst of deaths!”

At the mention of Grace’s piteous cry, even though heard in imagination, Hugh sank limply to the rock, his mouth falling open and his eyes bulging forth in agony.  Every drop of blood in his veins seemed frozen with the realization that he had deserted her in that hour when she had most needed him, that he had left her to go down to death without being by her side, that she had cried out to him for help,—­had reached out to him in agony.  Crazed by a sudden impulse, he sprang to his feet and glared out over the tumbling waves,—­ever moving mountains that reached as far as the eye could see.  She arose also, trembling and alarmed.

“Where is she?  Where is she?” he cried fiercely.  “My God!  Look at that water!  Grace, Grace!  My darling, how could I have left you alone to die in that hell of water!  Let me come to you now, dearest.  I will save you.  I will come!  Hugh is coming, dearest!  Look!  She must be out there somewhere.  I can reach her if I try.  I must go!”

Insane with despair, he leaped to his feet and would have dashed down the steep into the death-dealing breakers had not his companion, with a sharp cry, clutched his arm.  He turned fiercely, ready to strike her in his frenzy.  His glaring eyes met hers, sweet, wide, and imploring, and their influence told at once upon him.  A rush of quiet almost benumbed him, so immediate was the reaction from violence to submission.