Indeed, he made an attempt to do so when, as consciousness came back, Katy lay so pale and still before him; but Katy did not understand him or guess that he wished her to meet him more than half the way, and so the verdict was unchanged, and in a kind of bewilderment, Katy wrote the hurried letter, feeling less actual pain than did its readers, for the disappointment had stunned her for a time, and all she could remember of the passage home on that same night when Mark Ray sat with Helen in the sitting-room at Silverton, was that there was a fearful storm of rain mingled with lightning flashes and thunder peals, which terrified the other ladies, but brought to her no other sensation save that it would not be so very hard to perish in the dark waters dashing so madly about the vessel's side.