I can't tell if a straw ever saved a
drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair
pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of
despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere mental
weariness--not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of complete
collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's stewardess,
who did not seem aware of other human agonies than sea-sickness, who
talked of the probable weather of the passage--it would be a rough night,
she thought--and who insisted in a professionally busy manner, "Let me
make you comfortable down below at once, miss," as though she were
thinking of nothing else but her tip--was enough to dissipate the shades
of death gathering round the mortal weariness of bewildered thinking
which makes the idea of non-existence welcome so often to the young.
Flora de Barral did lie down, and it may be presumed she slept. At any
rate she survived the voyage across the North Sea and told Mrs. Fyne all
about it, concealing nothing and receiving no rebuke--for Mrs.
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