it, the strange dumb wonder, that the
snapping of her life meant less in reality to him than the snapping of a
stay aboard ship. The day after to-morrow he would mount the deck of
Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few crisp orders would set out on
the eternal sea, as though she were still alive in her cottage, as
though indeed she had never even lived, and northward he would go past
the purple Mull of Cantyre; past the Clyde, where the Ayrshire sloops
danced like bobbins on the water; past the isles, where overhead drove
the wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle-field; past the
Hebrides, where strange arctic birds whined like hurt dogs; northward
still to where the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black
winter nights; eastward and southward to where the swell of the Dogger
Bank rose, where the fish grazed like kine. Over the great sea he would
go as though nothing had happened, not even the snapping of a stay--down
to the sea, where the crisp winds of dawn were, and the playful, stupid,
short-sighted porpoises; the treacherous sliding icebergs; and the gulls
that cried with the sea's immense melancholy; and the great plum-colored
whales....

Section 2

To his nostrils, sterilized as they were by the salt air of the sea, the
rich scents of Louth came in a rushing profusion. The wild roses of
June were like the high notes of a violin, and there was clover, and
mown hay. In the southeast the clouds were banking, but still the moon
rose high, and the cottage was clear as in daylight, clearer even in the
mind's eye--the whitewashed walls, the thatch like silver, the swallows'
nests beneath the eaves. The hard round sea-cobbles beneath his feet
were clear and individual, and to where he sat in the haggard came a
girl's song from down the road:

"Oh, Holland is a wondrous place and in it grows much green.
It's a wild inhabitation for my young love to be in.
There the sugar-cane grows plentiful, and leaves on every tree,
But the low, lowlands of Holland are between my love and me."

He listened with a cocked ear, and smiled as he thought how easy it
would be to stroll down the road to where the singing girl was, and
accost her pleasantly: "So he's in Holland, is he? That's the queer and
foolish place for him to be, and I here!" There would be banter, quick
and smart as a whip, a scuffle, a clumsily placed kiss, laughter,
another scuffle, and a kiss that found its mark somehow, then a saun