There was a large and fashionable watering-place five miles away.  This was New Silverstrand, a town of red brick, self-centred and prosperous.  But he had not thought that its visitors would have overflowed into the old fishing-town.  He himself saw no attraction there save the peace of the shore and the turmoil of the sea.  He had known and loved the old town in his youth, long before the new one had been built or even thought of.  For New Silverstrand was a growth of barely ten years.

In all his wanderings his heart had always turned with a warm thrill of memory to the little old fishing-town where much of his restless boyhood had been spent.  He had returned to it as to a familiar friend and found it but slightly changed.  A new hotel had been erected where the old Crayfish Inn had once stood.  And this, so far as he had been able to judge in his first walk through the place on the evening of his arrival, was the sole alteration.

He had heard that the shore had crumbled beyond the town, but he had left that to be investigated on the morrow.  The fishing-harbour was the same; the brown-sailed fishing-boats rocked with the well-remembered swing inside; the water poured roaring in with the same baffled fury; and children played as of old on the extreme and dangerous edge of the stone quay.

The memory of that selfsame quay roused deeper recollections in Merefleet’s mind as he sat and dined alone at the little table near the door.

There came to him the thought, with a sudden, stabbing regret, of a little dark-eyed sister who had hung with him over that perilous edge and laughed at the impotent breakers below.  He could hear the silvery echoes of her laughter across half a lifetime, could feel the warm hand that clasped his own.  A magic touch swept aside the years and revealed the old, glad days of his boyhood.

Merefleet pushed away his plate and sat with fixed eyes, fascinated by the rosy vision.  They were side by side in a fishing-smack, he and the playmate of his childhood.  There was an old fisherman in charge with grizzled hair, whose name, he recollected without effort, was Quiller.  He was showing the little maid how to tie a knot that was warranted never to come undone.

Merefleet watched the ardent, flushed face with a deep reverence.  He had not seen it so vividly since the day he had kissed it for the last time and gone forth into the seething sea of life to fight the whirlpools.  Well, he had emerged triumphant so far as earthly success went.  He had breasted the tide and risen above the billows.  He was wealthy, and he was celebrated.  No mortal power rose up in his path to baulk him of his desire.  Only desire itself had failed him, and ambition had become mockery.

For twenty years he had not had time to stop and think.  For twenty years he had wrestled ceaselessly with the panting crowd.  He had bartered away the best years of his life to the gold god, and he was satiated with the success of this transaction.