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The mist was thinner here at the top of the hill, and Rickman recognized the road he had crossed when he had turned eastwards that morning. He could now have found his way back perfectly well; but he did not say so. A few minutes' walk brought them to the place where he had sat down in his misery and looked over Harmouth valley.
That was on the seventeenth, and it was now the twenty-seventh and Jewdwine had not written. Rickman should have been back in London long before that time; he had allowed himself four days to finish his horrible work; and he had finished it. But as it happened the end of twelve days found him still in Harmouth.
After an hour of dipping and climbing he reached a small fishing village. Here he dined and rested, and it was mid-afternoon before he turned again towards Harmouth. There was no chance of missing his way; he had nothing to do but follow the coast-line as he had done before. As he went on westwards the mist kept pace with him, gradually diminishing the view he had hoped to see.
In the great city she had been but a human atom. Her conduct, her unhappiness, her very existence mattered to no one there, except, perhaps, to Ben and Polly, who were as tender and sympathetic as such vigorous people could be; but in Harmouth every creature was interested in Simeon's fate, and watched Deena with a curiosity she found maddening.
And as he looked there fell from him the past five years, the long estranging years of bitterness and misery and vain desire, and the years, still more estranging, of his madness and his folly; and not the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped fathom deep and forgotten in the gaze of her pure and tender eyes.
The expression of the mouth was shrewd, almost sarcastic, and possibly a little coarse, but his smile redeemed it and illumined his face like sunshine. What dazzled the ladies of Harmouth was really a certain easy luxury in dress and habits not common in the little town. It is always the exotic we prize in our conservatories.
Polly and Ben had taken Stephen's place for the summer, during his protracted absence, and had but recently returned to New York. "Polly and Ben would despise your snobbishness just as I do; besides, I do not approve of your taking eatables to school," she added, disingenuously, for her objection was to furnishing food for Harmouth gossip not to Dicky. "Oh, pshaw!" he exclaimed.
All through that second summer his letters had been growing more tender, more urgent, till at last he had taken matters into his own hands, and decided that their separation must end. For aught she knew, his vessel might already have reached New York he might be that blessed moment on his way to Harmouth! The thought sent little thrills of happiness bounding through her veins.
"I will take the yacht off your hands," said Stephen, casually. "You!" she exclaimed. "Are you running away from or with anybody, that you suddenly annex an ocean steamer? You were prosing only yesterday afternoon about work and duty, as if nothing could separate you from Harmouth. Is the attraction going to bolt with you, Stevie?"
Deena, laughing though embarrassed, was trying to cover the countenance that provoked the discussion with a veil, for her hat strained at its pins and threatened to blow back to Harmouth before the knotty point was settled as to who should pay for it.
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