hurry to get the wedding over, and was so afraid of her relatives
finding me there, that I must have received her advances with a
certain amount of absence of mind. I was out of that room and
down the ladder in under half a minute. She kept me waiting at
the foot an unconscionable time--it was certainly three in the
morning before we knocked up that minister. And I think that that
wait was the only sign Florence ever showed of having a
conscience as far as I was concerned, unless her lying for some
moments in my arms was also a sign of conscience. I fancy that, if
I had shown warmth then, she would have acted the proper wife to
me, or would have put me back again. But, because I acted like a
Philadelphia gentleman, she made me, I suppose, go through with
the part of a male nurse. Perhaps she thought that I should not
mind.

After that, as I gather, she had not any more remorse. She was only
anxious to carry out her plans. For, just before she came down the
ladder, she called me to the top of that grotesque implement that I
went up and down like a tranquil jumping-jack. I was perfectly
collected. She said to me with a certain fierceness:

"It is determined that we sail at four this afternoon? You are not
lying about having taken berths?"

I understood that she would naturally be anxious to get away from
the neighbourhood of her apparently insane relatives, so that I
readily excused her for thinking that I should be capable of lying
about such a thing. I made it, therefore, plain to her that it was my
fixed determination to sail by the "Pocahontas". She said then--it
was a moonlit morning, and she was whispering in my ear whilst I