"But the worst must be over. The wind already abates,
and as soon as the sea goes down--"
As he spoke there came the terrible cry, loud above all other clamor,
"A leak! a leak!" and then followed the renewed trampling of feet
overhead, and the hoarse wheeze of the pumps.
"We are going down," Lilian said, and turned that white face away.
"Oh, John!, before we go forgive me," she cried; and John held his
outstretched arms toward her and folded her within them.
Reyburn saw it, and even in that supreme moment, when life and death
swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him. He beheld now
with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at his feet whose beauty
an hour ago had melted his soul: she was flesh to him only--her beauty
was of the earth, and flesh and the earth were passing, and it was
other things on which such moments as these were opening--things such
as shone in the transfigured face of Lilian--of Lilian whom, if this
marsh-light had not dazzled him from his way, he might now be holding
to his heart triumphant; for here disguises would have fallen and he
could have claimed his own. For, whether it were the terror of the
time, or the trancelike and spiritual look of Lilian, or whether it
were the jealous pang of seeing her in another's arms, the love on
which he had been waiting for two years and more, to which he had
sacrificed time and endeavor, which had brought him here to this
danger and this death, returned now and overwhelmed him, and the
passion of a day and night fell apart and left him in its ruins.
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