less. Don't you remember when I told
you I was prepared to accept the consequences?"

It seemed so long a time since then!

"And once having begun to intermeddle, I can't stop, don't you see?
Now, Sheila, you'll be a good little girl and do what I tell you.
You'll take the boat a long way out: we'll put her head round, take
down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till
you tell me all about your troubles, and then we'll see what can be
done."

She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge
into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at
her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand.
She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She
knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he
fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced
so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness,
she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure
her was right for her to do.

How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs
above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King's road and all its
carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the
white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to
be close in shore; the two piers were fore-shortened into small dusky
masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant
and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small
white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched
that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp
gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.

Ingram took his seat by Sheila's side, so that he should not have
to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little preliminary
nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to
sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters
stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble
might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and
explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He
let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and the girl spoke