William Jarrett boards the Morrow, a sailing ship for New York with few other companions besides a woman, Jannette Harford. They become friendly and connect in a deep way that the first-person narrator assures the reader is not love. However, when William speaks of this feeling to Jannette, she takes up a strange look towards him and continues to look at him before closing her eyes. She appears to have fallen asleep. William looks at the book she is reading on her lap and where her index finger fell. It fell on a passage from Denneker's Meditations about souls meeting and knowing one another from beyond the body. Very quickly a storm sets in and creates certain havoc. The ship begins to sink and after Jannette is ripped away from William, he passes out. He awakes on the City of Prague, a steamship that left a tthe same time as the Morrow and Jarrett had been originally invited to go aboard with his friend. His friend, Gordon Doyle stares at him now trying to deduce what is going on. As William slowly learns, he has been on the City of Prague since it sailed and that he had been sick the past few days. He also learns that Jannette is Gordon's fiance who was sent on the Morrow so that Doyle could settle things in New York before her arrival. William also notices the book that Doyle is reading which is Denneker's Meditations with a special passage marked, apparently a second copy that Jannette had given him. When Gordon and Jarrett arrive in New York, they look for Jannette's arrive, but it never appears.