‘I?  It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?’

‘Very.’

’Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep.  Wouldn’t you like to be here?’

‘Not I.’

‘You would!’

‘Why should I?  I prefer England.’

’But Flance is nice too:  and Flance wants to be fliends with England, and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends.  Couldn’t some lapplochement be negotiated?’

‘Good-bye.  This talking spoils my morning smoke....’

So we speak together across the sea, my God.

* * * * *

On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the Stettin, which seemed to require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the sea:  for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to her, and be at rest.

I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the colour of ashes to my very lips.  By half-past two o’clock I was finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word.  But in the silent depths of my being I felt this fact:  that this must be a 35-knot boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120 miles away, and at 7 P.M.  I should be on its quay.

And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to her, crying out:  ‘I am coming!’ And I knew that she heard me, and that her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering.

The sun went down:  it set.  I was tired of the day’s work, and of standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of France.  And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned the ship’s head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers:  and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish:  for I could not go to her.  But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering back for England:  for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said:  ’Oh no, no more.  If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is impossible, how can I?  To-morrow night as the sun sets—­without fail—­so help me God—­I will kill myself.’