He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began to dream.  A face came up out of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as in that picture of Vedder’s which he calls “Memory,” but the hair was not blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes were like it.  “Horrible! horrible!” he tried to shriek, but he cried, “Alice, I love you.”  There was a burglar in the room, and he was running after Miss Pasmer.  Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long, washing sound like water.

Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves.  The boat was pitching frightfully.  He struggled out into the saloon, and saw that it was five o’clock.  In five hours more it would be a day since he told Alice that he loved her; it now seemed very improbable.  There were a good many half-dressed people in the saloon, and a woman came running out of her state-room straight to Mavering.  She was in her stocking feet, and her hair hung down her back.

“Oh! are we going down?” she implored him.  “Have we struck?  Oughtn’t we to pray—­somebody?  Shall I wake the children?”

“Mavering reassured her, and told her there was no danger.

“Well, then,” she said, “I’ll go back for my shoes.”

“Yes, better get your shoes.”

The saloon rose round him and sank.  He controlled his sickness by planting a chair in the centre and sitting in it with his eyes shut.  As he grew more comfortable he reflected how he had calmed that woman, and he resolved again to spend his life in doing good.  “Yes, that’s the only ticket,” he said to himself, with involuntary frivolity.  He thought of what the officer had said, and he helplessly added, “Circus ticket—­reserved seat.”  Then he began again, and loaded himself with execration.

The boat got into Portland at nine o’clock, and Mavering left her, taking his hand-bag with him, and letting his trunk go on to Boston.

The officer who received his ticket at the gangplank noticed the destination on it, and said, “Got enough?”

“Yes, for one while.”  Mavering recognised his acquaintance of the night before.

“Don’t like picnics very much.”

“No,” said Mavering, with abysmal gloom.  “They don’t agree with me.  Never did.”  He was aware of trying to make his laugh bitter.  The officer did not notice.

Mavering was surprised, after the chill of the storm at sea, to find it rather a warm, close morning in Portland.  The restaurant to which the hackman took him as the best in town was full of flies; they bit him awake out of the dreary reveries he fell into while waiting for his breakfast.  In a mirror opposite he saw his face.  It did not look haggard; it looked very much as it always did.  He fancied playing a part through life—­hiding a broken heart under a smile.  “O you incorrigible ass!” he said to himself, and was afraid he had said it to the young lady who brought him his breakfast, and looked haughtily at him from under her bang.  She was very thin, and wore a black jersey.