“Could you lie down?  I’ll talk to you,” she whispered.  “I’ll see you through.”

“I can’t—­endure—­this tension,” he muttered.  “For God’s sake let me go!”

“Where?”

“You know.”

“Yes....  But it won’t do.  We must carry on, you and I.”

“If you—­knew—­”

“I do know!  When these crises come try to fix your mind on what you have become.”

“Yes....  A hell of a soldier.  Do you really believe that my country needs a thing like me?” She stood looking at him in silence—­knowing that he was in a torment of some terrible sort.  His eyes were still covered by his arm.  On his boyish brow the blonde-brown hair had become damp.

She went across and passed her arm through his.  His hand rested, fell to his side, but he suffered her to guide him through the corridors toward a far bluish spark that seemed as distant as Venus, the star.

They walked very slowly for a while on deck, encountering now and then the shadowy forms of officers and crew.  The personnel of the several hospital units in transit were long ago in bed below.

Once he said:  “You know, Miss Erith, it is not I who behaves like a scoundrel to you.”

“I know,” she said with a dauntless smile.

“Because,” he went on, searching painfully for thought as well as words, “I’m not really a brute—­was not always a blackguard—­”

“Do you suppose for one moment that I blame a man who has been irresponsible through no fault of his, and who has made the fight and has won back to sanity?”

“I—­am not yet—­well!”

“I understand.”

They paused beside the port rail for a few moments.

“I suppose you know,” he muttered, “that I have thought—­at times—­of ending things—­down there. ...  You seem to know most things.  Did you suspect that?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I wake easily.”

“I know you do.  I can’t stir in bed but I hear you move, too....  I should think you’d hate and loathe me—­for all I’ve done—­for all I’ve cost you.”

“Nurses don’t loathe their patients,” she said lightly.

“I should think they’d want to kill them.”

“Oh, Mr. McKay!  On the contrary they—­they grow to like them—­exceedingly.”

“You dare not say that about yourself and me.”

Miss Erith shrugged her pretty shoulders:  “I don’t have to say anything, do I?”

He made no reply.  After a long silence she said casually:  “The sea is calmer, I think.  There’s something resembling faint moonlight up among those flying clouds.”

He lifted his tragic face and gazed up at the storm-wrack speeding overhead.  And there through the hurrying vapours behind flying rags of cloud, a pallid lustre betrayed the smothered moon.

There was just enough light, now, to reveal the forward gun under its jacket, and the shadowy gun-crew around it where the ship’s bow like a vast black, plough ripped the sea asunder in two deep, foaming furrows.