She would not hear any excuse for her.

"Her children oughtn't to have been out of her mind for an instant." "Don't you want to send back a line to ours by the pilot ?" March asked.
She started from him.

"Oh, was I really beginning to forget them ?" In the saloon where people were scattered about writing pilot's letters she made him join her in an impassioned epistle of farewell, which once more left none of the nothings unsaid that they had many times reiterated.

She would not let him put the stamp on, for fear it would not stick, and she had an agonizing moment of doubt whether it ought not to be a German stamp; she was not pacified till the steward in charge of the mail decided.
"I shouldn't have forgiven myself," March said, "if we hadn't let Tom know that twenty minutes after he left us we were still alive and well." "It's to Bella, too," she reasoned.
He found her making their state-room look homelike with their familiar things when he came with their daughter's steamer letter and the flowers and fruit she had sent.

She said, Very well, they would all keep, and went on with her unpacking.