indeed, that consciousness of greater possibilities in the adventure
than May admitted or imagined which made Lennox so insistent.
Looking back, he perceived many things, and chiefly that he had
taken a wrong line, and approached Mary's husband from a fatal
angle. Too late he recognized his error. It was inevitable that
a hint of suspected danger would confirm the sailor in his
resolution; and that such a hint should follow the spin of the
coin against Lennox, and be accompanied by the assurance that, had
he won, Henry would have proceeded, despite his intuitions, to do
what he now begged Tom not to do--that was a piece of clumsy work
which he deeply regretted.

At the hour when his own physical forces were lowest, his errors
of diplomacy forced themselves upon his mind. He wasted much time,
as all men do upon their beds, in anticipating to-morrow; in
considering what is going to happen, or what is not; in weighing
their own future words and deeds given a variety of contingencies.
For reason, which at first kept him, despite his disquiet, in the
region of the rational, grew weaker with Henry as the night
advanced; the shadow of trouble deepened as his weary wits lost
their balance to combat it. The premonition was as formless and
amorphous as a cloud, and, though he could not see any shape to
his fear, or define its limitations, it grew darker ere he slept.
He considered what might happen and, putting aside any lesser
disaster, tried to imagine what the morning would bring if May
actually succumbed.

For the moment the size of such an imaginary disaster served
curiously to lessen his uneasiness. Pushed to extremities, the
idea became merely absurd. He won a sort of comfort from such an