rfect terror to a simple man, what
with the fads and proprieties and the ceremonies and affectations. He
hated all that. He wasn't fit for it. There was no rest and peace and
security but on the sea.

This gave one a view of Captain Anthony as a hermit withdrawn from a
wicked world. It was amusingly unexpected to me and nothing more. But
it must have appealed straight to that bruised and battered young soul.
Still shrinking from his nearness she had ended by listening to him with
avidity. His deep murmuring voice soothed her. And she thought
suddenly that there was peace and rest in the grave too.

She heard him say: "Look at my sister. She isn't a bad woman by any
means. She asks me here because it's right and proper, I suppose, but
she has no use for me. There you have your shore people. I quite
understand anybody crying. I would have been gone already, only, truth
to say, I haven't any friends to go to." He added brusquely: "And you?"

She made a slight negative sign. He must have been observing her,
putting two and two together. After a pause he said simply: "When I
first came here I thought you were governess to these girls. My sister
didn't say a word about you to me."

Then Flora spoke for the first time.

"Mrs Fyne is my best friend."

"So she is mine," he said without the slightest irony or bitterness, but
added with conviction: "That shows you what life ashore is. Much better
be out of it."

As they were approaching the cottage he was heard again as though a long
silent walk had not intervened: "But anyhow I shan't ask her anything
about you."

He stopped short and she went on alone. His last words had impressed
her. Everything he had said seemed somehow to have a special meaning
under its obvious conversational sense. Till she went in at the door of
the cottage she felt his eyes resting on her.

That is it. He had made himself felt. That girl was, one may say,
washing about with slack limbs in the ugly surf of life with no
opportunity to strike out for herself, when suddenly she had been made
to feel that there was somebody beside her in the bitter water. A most
considerable moral event for her; whether she was aware of it or not.
They met again at the one o'clock dinner. I am inclined to think that,
being a healthy girl under her frail appearance, and fast walking and
what I may call relief-crying (there are many kinds of crying) making
one hungry, she made a good meal. It