“I wish I knew where we are at this moment,” mused the girl.  She counted the days on her fingertips:  “We may be off Bordeaux....  It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

To him it had been a century of dread endured through half-awakened consciousness of the latest inferno within him.

“It’s been very long,” he said, sighing.

A few minutes later they caught a glimpse of a strangled moon overhead—­a livid corpse of a moon, tarnished and battered almost out of recognition.

“Clearing weather,” she said cheerfully, adding:  “To-morrow we may be in the danger zone....  Did you ever see a submarine?”

“Yes.  Did you?”

“There were some up the Hudson.  I saw them last summer while motoring along Riverside Drive.”

The spectral form of an officer appeared at her elbow, said something in a low voice, and walked aft.

She said:  “Well, then, I think we’d better dress. ...  Do you feel better?”

He said that he did, but his sombre gaze into darkness belied him.  So again she slipped her arm through his and he suffered himself to be led away along the path of shinning arrows under foot.

At his door she said cheerfully:  “No more undressing for bed, you know.  No more luxury of night-clothes.  You heard the orders about lifebelts?”

“Yes,” he replied listlessly.

“Very well.  I’ll be waiting for you.”

She lingered a moment more watching him in his brooding revery where he stood leaning against the doorway.  And after a while he raised his haunted eyes to hers.

“I can’t keep on,” he breathed.

“Yes you can!”

“No....  The world is slipping away—­under foot.  It’s going on without me—­in spite of me.”

“It’s you that are slipping, if anything is.  Be fair to the world at least—­even if you mean to betray it—­and me.”

“I don’t want to betray anybody—­anything.”  He had begun to tremble when he stood leaning against his door.  “I—­don’t know—­what to do.”

“Stand by the world.  Stand by me.  And, through me, stand by your own self.”

The young fellow’s forehead was wet with the vague horror of something.  He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a dreadful look of appeal which turned into a snarl.

He whispered between writhing lips:  “Can’t you let me alone?  Can’t I end it if I can’t stand it—­without your blocking me every time—­every time I stir a finger—­”

“McKay!  Wait!  Don’t touch me!—­don’t do that!”

But he had her in a sudden grip now—­was looking right and left for a place to hurl her out of the way.

“I’ve stood enough, by God!” he muttered between his teeth.  “Now I’m through—­”

“Please listen.  You’re out of your mind,” she said breathlessly, not struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms around one of his.

“You hurt me,” she whimpered.  “Don’t be brutal to me!”