the sea.

'I must go round the other way,' she said. 'The water has come up too
far on that side.'

And she walked past him to the other end of the cove.

The prospect of another wait chilled Wilton to the marrow. The wind had
now grown simply freezing, and it came through his thin suit and roamed
about all over him in a manner that caused him exquisite discomfort. He
began to jump to keep himself warm.

He was leaping heavenwards for the hundredth time, when, chancing to
glance to one side, he perceived Mary again returning. By this time his
physical misery had so completely overcome the softer emotions in his
bosom that his only feeling now was one of thorough irritation. It was
not fair, he felt, that she should jockey at the start in this way and
keep him hanging about here catching cold. He looked at her, when she
came within range, quite balefully.

'It is impossible,' she said, 'to get round that way either.'

One grows so accustomed in this world to everything going smoothly,
that the idea of actual danger had not yet come home to her. From where
she stood in the middle of the cove, the sea looked so distant that the
fact that it had closed the only ways of getting out was at the moment
merely annoying. She felt much the same as she would have felt if she
had arrived at a station to catch a train and had been told that the
train was not running.

She therefore seated herself on a rock, and contemplated the ocean.
Wilton walked up and down. Neither showed any disposition to exercise
that gift of speech which places Man in a class of his own, above the
ox, the ass, the common wart-hog, and the rest of the lower animals. It
was only when a wave swished over the base of her rock that Mary broke
the silence.

'The tide is coming _in_' she faltered.

She looked at the sea with such altered feelings that it seemed a
different sea altogether.

There was plenty of it to look at. It filled the entire mouth of the
little bay, swirling up the sand and lashing among the rocks in a
fashion which made one thought stand out above all the others in her
mind--the recollection that she could not swim.

'Mr Wilton!'

Wilton bowed coldly.

'Mr Wilton, the tide. It's coming IN.'

Wilton glanced superciliously at the sea.

'So,' he said, 'I perceive.'

'But what shall we do?'

Wilton shrugged his shoulders. He was feeling at war with Nature and
Humanity combined. The wind had shifted a few points to the east, an