I could not understand Vi. It would seem that she was trying to avoid me. If I met her in the street she was usually driving and, while she bowed and smiled, never halted. I took many strolls by her house, hoping to catch her going in or out. I think she must have watched me. Once only, when she thought the coast was clear, I came upon her just as she was leaving the house. She saw me and flushed gloriously; then pretended that she had not seen me and re-entered, closing the door hurriedly behind her.

After that I gave up my pursuit of her. It seemed not straightforward—too much like spying. I kept away from the places she was likely to frequent. Wandering the quays, where there were only sailors and red-capped Brittany onion-sellers, I racked my brains, trying to recall in what I had offended. I felt no resentment for Vi’s conduct. It never occurred to me that she was a coquette. I thought that she might be actuated by a woman’s caution, and gave her credit for motives of which I had no knowledge. The more she withdrew beyond my attainment, the more desirable she became to me.

My grandmother noticed my fallen countenance and concluded that Sir Charles’s indifference was the cause of it. She tried to cheer me with fragments of wise sayings which had helped her to keep her courage. She told me that there were more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. She even feigned contempt for Sir Charles, saying that I should probably be just as happy without his begrudged money. She resorted to religion for comfort, saying that if God didn’t intend me to inherit Woadley, it was because it wouldn’t be good for me. She painted for me the pleasures of the contented life:


“No riches I covet, no glory I want,

H’ambition is nothing to me;

The one thing I beg of kind ’eaven to grant

Is a mind independent and free.”


But she couldn’t stir me out of my melancholy, for she didn’t know its cause. She physicked me for financial disappointments; what I wanted was a love-antidote.

As my whole energies had formerly been bent on encountering Vi, so now they were directed towards avoiding her. For hours I would lounge in the bake-house or sit in the shop while Grandmother Cardover did her knitting, served customers, or gossiped with her neighbors. Then, against my better judgment, curiosity and longing for one more glimpse of her would drag me out into the streets, Yet, once in the streets, my chief object was to flee from her.

Now when I should have refrained from pestering her, some obstinate fate was always bringing us face to face. I was sorriest for the effect that our attitude was having on Dorrie. At first she would rush forward in a gale of high spirits to greet me, until restrained by Vi. Next time, with a child’s forgetfulness, she would lift to me her pansy-face smiling, and remembering would hang back. At last she grew afraid of my troubled looks, and would hide shyly behind Vi’s skirts when she saw me.

For five days I had not met them. A desperate suspicion that they had left town grew upon me. I became reckless in my desire for certainty. I could not bear the suspense. I was half-minded to call at the house where she had been staying, but that did not seem fair to her. I called myself a fool for not having stopped her in the street while I had the chance, when an explanation and an apology might have set everything on a proper footing.

On the sixth morning of her absence I rose early and went out before breakfast. The skies were gray and squally. A slow drizzle had been falling all night and, though it now had ceased, the pavements were wet. The wind came in gusts, whistling round corners of streets and houses, whirling scraps of paper high in the air. When I came to the harbor, I saw that the sea was choppy and studded with white horses. Against the piles of the pier waves were dashing and shattering into spray. From up channel, all along the horizon, drove long lines of leaden clouds.

I struck out across the denes between the sea-wall and the Beach Road. No one was about. I braced myself against the wind, enjoying its stinging coldness. The tormented loneliness of the scene was in accord with my mood. The old town, hanging red along the cliff, no longer seemed to watch me; it frowned out on the desolate waste of water in impersonal defiance.

My thoughts were full of that first morning when I had met her. I gave my imagination over without restraint to reconstructing its sensuous beauty. I saw the fire of the furze again, and scented the far-blown fragrance of wall-flowers, hiding in their crannies. But I saw as the center of it all the slim white girl with the mantle of golden hair, the deep inscrutable eyes of violet, and the slow sweet smile of La Gioconda playing round the edges of her mouth: gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips and sunshine for a background.

The hot blood in me was up—the gipsy blood. A stream of impassioned fancies passed before me. Ah, if I were to meet her now, I would have done with fine-spun theories of what was gentlemanly. On the lonely beach I would throw my arms about her, however she struggled, and hold her fast till she lay with her dear face looking up, crushed and submissive in my breast. After that she might leave me, but she would at least have learnt that I was a man and that I loved her.

Ahead lay the sullen wreck. I had been there only once since our first meeting. Motives of delicacy, which I now regretted, had held me back. Now I could go there. On such a morning, though she were still in Ransby, there would be no fear of surprising her.

On entering the hull through the hole in the prow, the wind ceased, though it whistled overhead. I leant against the walls of the stranded ship, recovering my breath. I. drew out my pipe, intending to take a smoke while I rested. As I turned to strike a match, an open umbrella lying in a corner on the sand, caught my attention. I went over and looked behind it; there lay a pair of woman’s shoes and stockings, and a jacket, with stones placed on it to keep it down. Beneath the jacket was a disordered pile of woman’s clothing.

My first thought was shame of what she might think of me, were she to find me. My second was of angry fear because she had been so foolhardy as to bathe from such a shore on such a morning.

Hurrying out of the wreck, I strode across the beach to where the surf rushed boiling up the pebbles. The waves ran high, white, and foam-capped, hammering against the land. Gazing out from shore, I could see nothing but leaden water, rising and falling, rising and falling. The height of the waves might hide a swimmer from one standing at the water’s level; I raced back up the beach, and climbed the wreck. I could not discover her. The horror of what this meant stunned me; I could think of nothing else. My mind was in confusion. Then I heard my voice repeating over and over that she was not dead. The sheer monotony of the reiterated assertion, produced a sudden, unnatural clearness. “If she is not drowned, she must be somewhere out there,” I said.

I commenced to sweep the sea with my eyes in ever widening circles. Two hundred yards down the shore to the left and about fifty out, I sighted something. It was white and seemed only foam at first. The crest of a wave tossed it high for a second, then shut it out; when the next wave rose it was still there.

I shouted, but my voice would not carry against the wind. The next time the white thing rose on the crest I was sure that it was the face of a woman. I saw her arm thrown out above the surface; she was swimming the overarm stroke in an effort to make headway toward the land. I knew that she could never do it, for the current along the north beach runs seawards and the tide was going out. I gazed round in panic. The shore was forlorn and deserted. Behind me to the northward stretched the gaunt, bare cliffs. To the southward, a mile distant across the denes, stood the outskirts of the sleepy town. Before ever I could bring help, she would have been carried exhausted far out to sea, or else drowned. There was no boat on the shore between myself and the harbor. There was nothing between her and death but myself. And to go to her re............