— I. . excuse me, I don't even know what it is, I have to go. Stanley broke away from the limp grasp, and turned a few feet away recalling, thinking he might have asked Don Bildow if he had seen her; but Don Bildow was back deep in conversation, telling "Mrs. Hall" about — My little daughter, she's only six and she was all swollen up when I left, I shouldn't have left I know it, I have terrible guilt feelings about it, all swollen up in the middle. .
— And you're the young man who wanted to trade some Drarn-amine for some Phenobarbital?
Stanley turned to the tall woman, automatically held out his hand as he was accustomed to do when something was offered.
— But what do you need them for, you're all right, the tall woman's husband demanded. — You can walk, I can't even walk.
— They're not for me, she said to him, — they're for Huki-lau, . now where did that boy go?
At the door, Stanley had to wait a moment.
— After you, Senator.
— After you, Mister Senator.
— Senator, you'll be doing me a great service if you'll go first and help me out, I can't even see the door, sir.
Stanley saw her pass, outside on the deck, running. — Excuse me, I…
— What?. . Senator?
— Excuse me, sir, I…
— Oops!…
— I'm sorry, I…
She was not in sight, but Stanley hurried in the direction she'd gone. He dropped the sticky pills into his pocket, found the tooth, and ran clutching it. Rounding another corner, he saw her feet through a flight of steps; but when he reached them, and got up them, she was gone again. He stopped to get breath. A man in a dinner jacket approached, and Stanley, thinking, stopped him to ask for the ship's hospital. — You don't look ill, my boy. Stay out and get a little air, that'll straighten you up quicker than all the ductors. .
Stanley ran on over the metal plates, and finally he did reach the ship's hospital, but she was not there. At any rate he did not see her when he came in. Few of the beds were occupied, and round one stood a screen against which shadows moved, and he went there.
From within came the steady murmur of Spanish, interrupted but unbroken by subdued words in Father Martin's voice. Stanley stood listening to the confession, bound, not understanding its íeatures but only what it was. Then the murmur subsided, broke in a cough, took up again more rapidly and abruptly ceased. There was silence. The shadows on the screen moved, and then Father Martin's voice took up, a monody hardly breaking the reciprocal sounds which bound the ship in motion, no more pressing or importunate, and no more faltering than the movement of the ship itself into the darkness. Bells sounded somewhere, clear tones which penetrated the misereatur, hard separate sounds which signaled the Latin syllables with consequence: Stanley was counting them. For no reason, he had never learned the simple system oí ship's bells and seven might be any hour; but now each one pinioned his tension, waiting for the next, listening, as he waited watching the shadows, for one of them to take form and move of itself. Then the bells stopped and left him swaying on the firm undulations,
— Per istam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam. . He smelled oil, or it seemed, burning oil, — indulgeat tibi Dominus. . the shallow of an erect thumb drew out elongated on the screen. — Quidquid deliquisti per oculos. . Then he saw her, moving slowly and more clear as she approached the light, her dress wrinkled and torn at the bosom, hair in disarray, and catching light her eyes were wild. — Deliquisti per aurem. . the voice came on with intolerable slowness, and that because its progress seemed to draw her on and restrain her at once. — Deliquisti per manus. .
When she broke and ran toward the screen Stanley stayed her no more than a shadow thrown across her. Nor did her body when she flung it forth heaving with sobs, seem to disturb more than a shadow so suddenly fallen upon him the figure laid out there, exposed for the last touch ot forgiveness upon the flesh where all of its impulses reared in one. And like a ragged shadow her hair almost covered his lined face, and her left arm round his head and his shoulder in her other hand so forcefully that it appeared to rise slightly from the bed, nothing moving but her lips on his ear, — Oh yes. . her voice broke but she would not leave it, — Oh yes, oh yes… Oh yes…
The left hand of the man on the bed came up slowly. It moved as though with life of its own into the shadow of her thigh, and there under a final hieroglyph of veins it came to rest.
Then there was no sound, of voices nor of any voice: and without, her shape flung down there appeared no longer dirigible. The only thing to bind time together was the reciprocal motion of the ship: yet in the moments of the prow dropping forth into a trough far ahead and shaking the fragments of its advance down in shudders all about them, Stanley had long since begun, repeated every motion of battle, every twist of the past convulsed nights, every skirt and dash in this sciamachy brought up firm now with Father Martin's hand on his shoulder until he straightened himself back to its force, straining away at last, rending away his spoil and leaving a dead man laid out in the light.
Together they staggered down decks, down steps, companionways, passages, nearly fell in the pool shifting just before their own door, and once inside it was as though they'd never left: buff-painted metal walls studded with double rows of rivets, metal above transected by a steel I-beam, steel under foot in plates lapped with rivets, the closed door flush and no way out but the ventilator, and this whole severe enclosure of angles driven by vibrations, in motion with no direction, it was more than as though they had never left it, as though they could never leave it, and had never been anywhere else. Stanley looked at his wrist watch, as though knowing what time it was might confirm something.
— Why did you take me away from him? she asked quietly.
Stanley looked up from the watch face to hers, and gaped at her. — But he wasn't… he isn't. . you. . That's all he could say: but she was still waiting, standing still against the roll of the ship and staring at him, her plain dress wrinkled and torn at the breast where he'd torn it, and on her face a look like she'd had that day he found her in the hospital, a day in his childhood it struck him now. He took one step toward her and raised his hand. — Now. . and he stopped as though something had caught in his throat: he had started to tell her to lie down, as though that could ever be an innocent proposal again, and a pain of a novel and intimate sort shot through him from behind to confirm the cleaned empty feeling his weak legs supported in witness.
— Why?
Stanley recovered the step he had taken forward, back. He saw streaks glistening on her face, but not tears. They were streaks from the anointed face she had thrown herself upon. And throwing both hands before him Stanley burst out, — But why did you. . who was he?. . how did you know who he was?
— He was?. . she repeated, and — Oh, he was. She put fingers her forehead and lowered her eyes, and then let her hand go down to an ear and stop at the empty lobe. — For he knows who I am, though he had so little to share… so precious little. And did you never know him? she asked, raising her face to Stanley, — his eyes, not the eyes of a lover, no, never but once. He brought lilies when selling them was against the law. Against the law?… to sell lilies? Still touching the lobe of her ear, she was looking away from him now, and went on, her voice low, — Not a lover, not looking to find what was there but for what he could put there, and so selfishly take it away. But he didn't! He didn't! He didn't! she cried, and she threw herself on Stanley.