Read "Ashes to Ashes" by Isabel Ostrander online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Morning found Storm with a desperate, hunted look in his eyes still pacing the floor, his heart sick within him. Why had that blundering ass, Millard, told him yesterday? Why had he been plunged in the madness of a fool's paradise for a few short hours, only to be drawn back into an existence that had become all the more unbearable by contrast?
He had contrived a sufficient measure of calmness in the late hours to read the amplification of the damning headlines. The _Alsace_ was supposed to have struck one of the floating mines of which she had been warned, and to have gone down with all on board. No calls for help had been received by wireless, no survivors picked up. Another liner, westward bound, had run into a mass of wreckage on the course of the unfortunate ship; wreckage which denoted a fearful explosion and fragments of which bore the name "_Alsace_". That was all; but it was conclusive, damning to Storm's last hope.