He knew them at once by their general appearance—the man by a peculiar gesture of raising his hat and wiping his forhead, the lady by the way she carried her parasol, the stick resting on her shoulder while she held the point of one of the ribs. And, recognizing them, he had a singular light-headed sensation, as though he would presently be floating dizzily out of his chair, and swept away over the sea. He fell back, feeling strangely weary, and dazzling sparks danced before his fixed gaze like glittering notes of interrogation. What was to be done? Could he devise some ingenious excuse and try to tempt Frank to leave the place, to flee? Oh! how small the world was! Was It for this that they had wandered over the globe, never knowing any rest—to meet, at their very first halting-place, the tvvo beings he most dreaded? Was this accident or Fatality? Yes, Fatality! But then—was he really afraid?
And in his dejection he felt quite sure that he was afraid of nothing; that he was profoundly indifferent, full of an intolerable weariness of selftorture. He was too tired to feel alarrn; he would wait and see what would happen. It must come. There was no escape. It was Fatality. It was rest to sit there, motionless, inert, will-less, with the wide silver-gray waters before him, waiting for what might happen. To struggle no more for his own ends, to fear no more, but to wait patiently and forever. It must come, like the tide from the ocean; it must cover him, as the surf covers the sands—and then go down again, and perhaps drag him with it, drowned and dead. A wave of that flood would wash over him and stop his breath— and more waves would follow—endlessly. A senseless tide—a fruitless eternity.
"I wish I did not feel it so acutely," he painfully thought. "It is too silly to feel it so. Perhaps nothing will come of it, and I shall live to be a hundred, in peace and contentment. Still, this is undeniable, this is a fact: they are there! They are here! But—if It were really coming I should not feel it. Nothing happens but the unexpected. It is mere nervous weakness, overtension. Nothing can really matter to me; nothing matters. The air is lovely and pleasantly soft; there floats a cloud. And I will just sit still, without fear, quite at my ease. There they are again! The seamews fly low— I will wait, wait— Those boys are playing in that boat; what folly! They will have it over!"
He looked with involuntary interest at their antics, and then again at the gentleman and lady. They were now full in sight, just below him; and they went past, knowing nothing, without a gesture, like two puppets.
"Ah! but / know," thought he. "They are here, and It has come in their train perhaps. But it may go away with them too, and be no more than a threat. So I shall wait; I do not care. If it must come it must."
They had gone out of sight. The boys and their boat were gone too. The shore in front of him was lonely—a long stretch of desert. Suddenly he was seized with a violent shivering—an ague. He stood up, his face quite colorless, his knees quaking. Terror had suddenly been too much for him, and large beads of sweat bedewed his forehead.
"God above!" thought he, "life is terrible. I have made it terrible. I am afraid. What can I do? Run away? No, no; I must wait. Can any harm come to me? No, none! None, none— There they were both of them, she and her father. I am really afraid. Ohl if it must come, great God! only let it come quickly!"
Then he fancied his eyes had deceived him; that it had not been those two. Impossible! And yet he knew that they were there. Terror throbbed in his breast with vehement heart-beating, and he now only marveled that he could have looked at the boat with the boys at all, while Sir Archibald and Eva were walking down on the shore: would it not be upset? That was what he had been thinking of the boat.
CHAPTER XXVI
A WHOLE fortnight of broiling summer days slipped by; and he waited, always too weary to make the smallest effort to induce Frank to quit the place. It might perhaps have cost him no more than a single word. But he never spoke the word —waiting, and gradually falling under a spell of waiting, as though he were looking for the mysterious outcome of an interesting denouement. Had they already met anywhere? Would they meet? And if they should, would anything come of it? One thing inevitably follows another, thought he; nothing can ever be done to check their course.
Westhove was in the habit of remaining a great deal indoors, leading a quiet life between his gloomy thoughts and his favorite gymnastics, not troubling himself about the summer crowd outside on the terrace and the shore. Thus the fortnight passed without his becoming aware of the vicinity of the woman whom Van Maeren dreaded. Not a suspicion of premonition thrilled through Frank's mild melancholy; he had gone on breathing the fresh sea air without
