The handsome captain had visited Ruth hours ago. They had talked about her harrowing experience, and about Stephen, though she hadn’t meant to. Most embarrassing, she must have dozed off in his presence. Cool breezes had washed over her from the open porthole when she awakened to the night, with a terrible headache that throbbed as if the inside of her head was frozen. Then she must have dozed off again, and in the bathroom of all places! Or sleepwalked, for she was standing upright, staring into the mirror. A hazy shape smeared across it, distorting Ruth’s face with a series of afterimages, Vaseline on a camera lens. Something drifting away—colors, shapes, a golden radiance—swimming away, languid and lovely, so beautiful, so beautiful, up slowly, so very deliberately, and up and up, toward the— “Come back,” she whispered. Air rushed from her windpipe and she jerked up her head. Her lids fluttered. She blinked at the mirror, and saw only herself. Her face was dripping wet.
