the
possible benefits to her.

That reflections too, enabled him to come victoriously out of three long
hours of inward wrestling--three long hours spent on the jetty which
thrust itself into the sea just outside his hotel at Havre. He supposed
he had already fought the battle with himself and won it. Its renewal on
the part of powers within his soul took him by surprise.

He had strolled out after dinner to the Chaussee des Etats-Unis to while
away the time before going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights
and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they
exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the
evening the Chaussee des Etats-Unis was naturally gay with the
landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafes were crowded both
inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument
from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with
sailors, and pretty young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly dressed in
black, mingled with both. It was what a fastidious observer of life
might call "low," but Davenant's judgments had no severity of that kind.
He looked at the merry groups, composed for the most part of chance
acquaintances, here to-day and gone to-morrow, swift and light of love,
with a curious craving for fellowship. From the gatherings of friends he
felt himself invariably the one shut out.

It was this sense of exclusion that finally sent him away from the
cheerful quay to wander down the jetty which marks the line where the
Harbor of Grace, with its intricate series of basins and docks, becomes
the sea. It was a mild night, though the waves beat noisily enough
against the bastions of the pier. At intervals he was swept by a scud of
spray. All sorts of acrid odors were in the wind--smells of tar and salt
and hemp and smoke and oil--the perfumes of sea-hazard and romance.

Pulling his cap over his brows and the collar of his ulster about his
ears, he sat down on the stone coping. His shoulders were hunched; his
hands hung between his knees. He did not care to smoke. For a few
minutes he was sufficiently occupied in tracing the lines and the
groupings of lights. He had been in Havre more than once before, and
knew the quai de Londres from the quai de New York, and both from the
quai du Chili. Across the mouth of the Seine he could distinguish the
misty radiance which must be Trouville from that which must be Honfleur.
Directly