s there for her in all beauty and in all
wonder.

Then she called to _me_. "Wally, come here. I want to speak to you."

I came.

"You thought I was going to leave Jimmy. But I wasn't. _He_ knew I
wasn't. Why, the first night I knew how impossible it was."

I said, Yes. Of course it was impossible. And of course he knew.

"I shan't mind if only we can get to him before anything happens."

I said nothing would happen, and of course we should get to him.

She was silent so long that I was startled when she said, "Wally--your
nervous aren't _you_, are they?"

I said, No. No. Of course they weren't.

I knew what she was thinking. Out of the intolerable beauty she had seen
Jimmy rise with all his gestures. She heard the cracking of his knuckles
and saw the jerking of his thumb. And these things became tender and
pathetic and dear to her as if he were dead.

And she had seen herself shudder at them as if it had been another woman
who shuddered, a strange and pitiless woman whom she hated.

"It wouldn't matter so much if he had wanted to go," she said.

"Why do you keep on saying that he didn't want to go?"

"Because he said so. He said he was only going because he couldn't go."

"I think you're doing him a great injustice. He told me he wanted to go;
I've no doubt he did want to go--just like any other man."

"Yes. To be just like any other man--_that's_ what he wanted. But he
couldn't be. He isn't like any other man. And so it's worse for him.
Can't you see that it's worse for him? It'll hurt him more."

I said I didn't see it, and that she was absurd and morbid and utterly
unreasonable, and that she was making Jimmy out unreasonable and morbid
and absurd.

She told me then I didn't understand either of them; and we were silent,
as if we had quarrelled again, until we came in sight of the Flemish
coast.

We sailed into Ostend on the tail-end of the sunset. What was left of it
was enough to keep up for us the intense moment of transfiguration, so
that we didn't miss it. The long white Digue, the towers, the domes of
the casinos and hotels, the high, flat fronts of the houses showed
soaked in light, quivering with light. Ostend might have been some
enchanted Eastern city. It was as if the heroic land faced us with the
illusion of enchantment, to cover the desolation that lay beyond her
dykes.

And we who looked at it were still silent, not now as if we had
quarrelled, but as if this beauty had made peace