h caused her to seek comfort only in her own heart; and when,
against her will, heavy tears rolled down her cheeks, she shook her head
impatiently. She drew a long breath and set herself resolutely to change
her thoughts.

But they were too compelling, and she could not drive from her mind the
memories that absorbed it. Her fancy, like a homing bird, hovered with
light wings about another coast; and the sea she looked upon reminded
her of another sea. The Solent. From her earliest years that sheet of
water had seemed an essential part of her life, and the calmness at her
feet brought back to her irresistibly the scenes she knew so well. But
the rippling waves washed the shores of Hampshire with a persuasive
charm that they had not elsewhere, and the broad expanse of it, lacking
the illimitable majesty of the open sea, could be loved like a familiar
thing. Yet there was in it, too, something of the salt freshness of the
ocean, and, as the eye followed its course, the heart could exult with a
sense of freedom. Sometimes, in the dusk of a winter afternoon, she
remembered the Solent as desolate as the Kentish sea before her; but her
imagination presented it to her more often with the ships, outward bound
or homeward bound, that passed continually. She loved them all. She
loved the great liners that sped across the ocean, unmindful of wind or
weather, with their freight of passengers; and at night, when she
recognised them only by the long row of lights, they fascinated her by
the mystery of their thousand souls going out strangely into the
unknown. She loved the little panting ferries that carried the good
folk of the neighbourhood across the water to buy their goods in
Southampton, or to sell the produce of their farms; she was intimate
with their sturdy skippers, and she delighted in their airs of
self-importance. She loved the fishing boats that went out in all
weathers, and the neat yachts that fled across the bay with such a
dainty grace. She loved the great barques and the brigantines that came
in with a majestic ease, all their sails set to catch the remainder of
the breeze; they were like wonderful, stately birds, and her soul
rejoiced at the sight of them. But best of all she loved the tramps that
plodded with a faithful, grim tenacity from port to port; often they
were squat and ugly, battered by the tempest, dingy and ill-painted; but
her heart went out to them. They touched her because their fate seemed
so inglo