We all rose at once, Santoris holding out a box of cigars to the men to help themselves.  Catherine and I preceded them up the saloon stairs to the deck, which was now like a sheet of silver in the light shed by one of the loveliest moons of the year.  The water around was sparkling with phosphorescence and the dark mountains looked higher and more imposing than ever, rising as they seemed to do sheer up from the white splendour of the sea.  I leaned over the deck rail, gazing down into the deep liquid mirror of stars below, and my heart was heavy and full of a sense of bitterness and tears.  Catherine had dropped languidly into a chair and was leaning back in it with a strange, far-away expression on her tired face.  Suddenly she spoke with an almost mournful gentleness.

“Do you like his theories?”

I turned towards her enquiringly.

“I mean, do you like the idea of there being no death and that we only change from one life to another and so on for ever?” she continued.  “To me it is appalling!  Sometimes I think death the kindest thing that can happen—­especially for women.”

I was in the mood to agree with her.  I went up to her and knelt down by her side.

“Yes!” I said, and I felt the tremor of tears in my voice—­“Yes, for women death often seems very kind!  When there is no love and no hope of love,—­when the world is growing grey and the shadows are deepening towards night,—­when the ones we most dearly love misjudge and mistrust us and their hearts are closed against our tenderness, then death seems the greatest god of all!—­one before whom we may well kneel and offer up our prayers!  Who could, who would live for ever quite alone in an eternity without love?  Oh, how much kinder, how much sweeter would be utter extinction—­”

My voice broke; and Catherine, moved by some sudden womanly impulse, put her arm round me.

“Why, you are crying!” she said, softly.  “What is it?  You, who are always so bright and happy!”

I quickly controlled the weakness of my tears.

“Yes, it is foolish!” I said—­“But I feel to-night as if I had wasted a good part of my life in useless research,—­in looking for what has been, after all, quite close to my hand,—­only that I failed to see it!—­and that I must go back upon the road I thought I had passed—­”

Here I paused.  I saw she could not understand me.

“Catherine,” I went on, abruptly—­“Will you let me leave you in a day or two?  I have been quite a fortnight with you on board the ‘Diana,’ and I think I have had enough holiday.  I should like”—­and I looked up at her from where I knelt—­“I should like to part from you while we remain good friends—­and I have an idea that perhaps we shall not agree so well if we learn to know more of each other.”

She bent her eyes upon me with a half-frightened expression.

“How strange you should think that!” she murmured—­“I have felt the same—­and yet I really like you very much—­I always liked you—­I wish you would believe it!”