Then, as she stood at the deck-rail, at last he spoke. "So that is your
last word upon the subject?"

She answered him briefly, "Yes."

She kept her face turned seawards. She was suddenly and overwhelmingly
conscious of bodily weakness. All her strength seemed to have gone into
that one great effort, that at the moment had seemed no effort at all.
She felt as if she were going to faint, and gripped herself with all her
quivering resolution, praying wildly that he might not notice.

He did not notice. For a few seconds more he stood behind her, while she
waited, palpitating, for his next move. Then, very suddenly he turned
and left her.

And Olga, instantly relaxing from a tension too terrible to be born,
covered her face with her hands and shuddered over and over again in
sick disgust.

It was many minutes before she recovered, minutes during which her mind
seemed to be almost too stunned for thought. Very gradually at length
she began to remember the words she had last uttered, the weapon she had
used; and numbly she wondered at herself.

No, she had scarcely acted on her own initiative. Her action had been
prompted by some force of which till that moment she had had no
knowledge, a force great enough to lift her above her own natural
impulses, great enough to help her in her sore strait, and to make all
other things seem of small importance.