I wonder if it was because I was a child, that he looked such a contemptuous brute, even when he pretended to smile.

It is twelve years since then.

I wonder--how I wonder, what I shall find." She stopped writing and sat a few moments, her chin upon her hand, thinking.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet in alarm.

The stillness of the night was broken by wild shouts, a running of feet outside, a tumult of mingled sounds and motion, a dash and rush of surging water, a strange thumping and straining of engines, and a moment later she was hurled from one side of her stateroom to the other by a crashing shock which seemed to heave the ship out of the sea, shuddering as if the end of all things had come.
It was so sudden and horrible a thing that, though she had only been flung upon a pile of rugs and cushions and was unhurt, she felt as if she had been struck on the head and plunged into wild delirium.