documents on a table
behind him.

Edwin wished he had not asked for the map. He had not meant to ask for
it. The words had said themselves. He gazed unseeing at the map for a
few instants.

"What particular street did you want, sir?" the porter murmured.

In deciding how to answer, it seemed to Edwin that he was deciding the
hazard of his life.

"Preston Street."

"Oh! Preston Street!" the porter repeated in a relieved tone, as if
assuring Edwin that there was nothing very esoteric about Preston
Street. "It's just beyond the Metropole. You know Regency Square.
Well, it's the next street after that. There's a club at the corner."

In the afternoon, then, Edwin must have walked across the end of Preston
Street twice. This thought made him tremble as at the perception of a
danger past but unperceived at the moment.

The porter gave his whole soul to the putting of Edwin's overcoat on
Edwin's back; he offered the hat with an obeisance, and having ushered
Edwin into the night so that the illustrious guest might view the storm,
he turned with a sudden new mysterious supply of zeal to other guests
who were now emerging from the dining-room.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIX.

The hotel fronted north on an old sheltered square where no storm raged,
but simultaneously with Edwin's first glimpse of the sea the wind struck
him a tremendous blow, and continued to strike. He had the peculiar
grim joy of the Midlander and Northerner in defying an element. All the
lamps of the promenade were insecurely flickering. Grouped opposite a
small jetty was a crowd of sightseers. The dim extremity of the jetty
was wreathed in spray, and the waves ran along its side, making curved
lines on the masonry like curved lines of a rope shaken from one end.
The wet floor of the jetty shone like a mirror. Edwin approached the
crowd, and, peeping over black shoulders, could see down into the hollow
of the corner between the jetty and the sea-wall, where boys on the
steps dared the spent waves, amid jeering laughter. The crowd had the
air of being a family intimately united. Farther on was another similar
crowd, near an irregular high fountain of spray that glittered in the
dark. On the beach below, at vague distances were curious rows of
apparently tiny people silhouetted like the edge of a black saw against
an excessive whiteness. This whiteness was the sheet of foam that the
se