at the end of the meadow.  A breadth of water gleamed.  Already the convolvulus moth was spinning over the flowers.  Orange and purple, nasturtium and cherry pie, were washed into the twilight, but the tobacco plant and the passion flower, over which the great moth spun, were white as china.  The rooks creaked their wings together on the tree-tops, and were settling down for sleep when, far off, a familiar sound shook and trembled—­increased —­fairly dinned in their ears—­scared sleepy wings into the air again—­ the dinner bell at the house.

After six days of salt wind, rain, and sun, Jacob Flanders had put on a dinner jacket.  The discreet black object had made its appearance now and then in the boat among tins, pickles, preserved meats, and as the voyage went on had become more and more irrelevant, hardly to be believed in.  And now, the world being stable, lit by candle-light, the dinner jacket alone preserved him.  He could not be sufficiently thankful.  Even so his neck, wrists, and face were exposed without cover, and his whole person, whether exposed or not, tingled and glowed so as to make even black cloth an imperfect screen.  He drew back the great red hand that lay on the table-cloth.  Surreptitiously it closed upon slim glasses and curved silver forks.  The bones of the cutlets were decorated with pink frills-and yesterday he had gnawn ham from the bone!  Opposite him were hazy, semi-transparent shapes of yellow and blue.  Behind them, again, was the grey-green garden, and among the pear-shaped leaves of the escallonia fishing-boats seemed caught and suspended.  A sailing ship slowly drew past the women’s backs.  Two or three figures crossed the terrace hastily in the dusk.  The door opened and shut.  Nothing settled or stayed unbroken.  Like oars rowing now this side, now that, were the sentences that came now here, now there, from either side of the table.

“Oh, Clara, Clara!” exclaimed Mrs. Durrant, and Timothy Durrant adding, “Clara, Clara,” Jacob named the shape in yellow gauze Timothy’s sister, Clara.  The girl sat smiling and flushed.  With her brother’s dark eyes, she was vaguer and softer than he was.  When the laugh died down she said:  “But, mother, it was true.  He said so, didn’t he?  Miss Eliot agreed with us. ...”

But Miss Eliot, tall, grey-headed, was making room beside her for the old man who had come in from the terrace.  The dinner would never end, Jacob thought, and he did not wish it to end, though the ship had sailed from one corner of the window-frame to the other, and a light marked the end of the pier.  He saw Mrs. Durrant gaze at the light.  She turned to him.

“Did you take command, or Timothy?” she said.  “Forgive me if I call you Jacob.  I’ve heard so much of you.”  Then her eyes went back to the sea.  Her eyes glazed as she looked at the view.

“A little village once,” she said, “and now grown. ...”  She rose, taking her napkin with her, and stood by the window.