A man upon a field of battle might receive a mortal wound and not know how badly he has been hurt. So too, Ruby did not understand at first the full depth of the strike that had been inflicted upon her heart. That knowledge came in a procession of gloom as the shores of England disappeared from sight. To have committed no wrong and yet to be thrust alone into an alien world, separated from those she loved, when a few days before she had been surrounded by joy, was all but impossible to bear. She thought of Murd. Did men walking on the street shrink without knowing why when he walked beside them? If he stood above a sleeping child’s bed, was the child troubled in its slumber by Murd’s dark shadow? She still did not doubt the tale that Murd and Isabella had told her. She knew now that her love for Edwin was without hope. But still she loved him. She would have gone to the world’s end to be with Edwin. Now, for Edwin’s sake, she was going to the end of the world without him. Ruby was travelling on an oak-hulled paddlewheel vessel with coal-fueled seawater boilers and secondary sail power.
