But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as we drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy people were returning from the Derby, including costers’ donkey carts in which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys were wearing the girls’ feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the “Honeysuckle and the Bee.”

     “Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
     Oi’d like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see.”

As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach, called the “Phoebus,” drawing up at the covered way in front of it, and a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us.

It was Alma, with my husband’s and Mr. Eastcliff’s party back from the races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me high compliments on my improved appearance.

“Didn’t I say the river air would do you good, dearest?” she said, and then she added something else, which would have been very sweet if it had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girl beautiful than to make her happy.

There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excused myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure, I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to my own room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind.

I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and done by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all by Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in a world of dream.

My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derby dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me in the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bed early—­partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go over everything again and yet again.

I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of my memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, I thought I heard Martin calling “shipmate,” and I said “Yes,” quite loud, as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-land which lies on the frontier of sleep.

How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!

Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that moment I did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious of a great flood of joy.  I cannot but think it strange that, though Nature had been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had been saying.  I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been looking for love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediately when it had come to me of itself.