ly he talked
to me. They were like neat incisions in my flesh, his words. Oh,
he spared me nothing, I assure you; there wasn't a phrase without a
beautifully tempered edge to it. I recalled his words when he had caught
us together, 'Don't let me disturb you, and above all remember that '_I
don't mind_,' and even in the midst of my rage and hatred I couldn't
help respecting him for that irony.

"I learnt now the full extent to which he had minded. Quite coldly he
told me. He had spent the week wondering whether it should be himself or
me that should be put out of the way. So much had he minded, you see.
I think he had been hurt in his pride, even more than in his affection
for... for her. I hadn't suspected that he was so sensitive over what he
considered his honour--dense of me, perhaps--but there was no mistaking
that this sensitiveness now tied the extra lash on to the whip of his
tongue. When he had finished talking, when he had said all that he
wanted to say, and all without once losing his temper or his damned
insolent dexterity, he nodded to me for all the world as though we had
been talking shop in Fleet Street, and were separating to go about our
various businesses. That nod remains with me; I'll never forget it or
forgive it; it seemed to me the last crowning insult; it seemed to sum
up all that I most hated in the man.

"He put his boat about, she heeled over a little as the breeze took her,
and that slight slant of her sail was pencilled against the pale sky as
she glided away across the water. I can't resist the journalistic touch,
you see," he added, with an outburst of extraordinary bitterness.

"It was not until his boat had dwindled to a tiny black dot far away
that I began fully to realise the situation. There was I, alone in
the middle of a great circle of sea and sky, alone and confined, and
ludicrously helpless. At first it was upon the ludicrous aspect that I
chiefly dwelt, the anger of it, the absurdity, and the humiliation. Then
little by little the horror of it crept over me, and I was aghast; there
was, of course, the gleam of hope that I might attract the attention of
a passing ship, but the Channel at that point must be fairly on the way
to becoming the Atlantic, and I dared not delude myself too boldly lest
I be disappointed. He wasn't coming back for me; he had made that quite
clear. He had left beside me on the bottom of the buoy a parcel of food
and a bottle of water, enough, he had said