He left me at my doorstep. I found that he had come to the island not to
play around for the summer at the country clubs and on the bathing
beach, but to live in the past--see it as it had once been--when its men
went down to the sea in ships. And because there was still so much that
we had to say to each other, I asked him to have a cup of tea with me,
"this afternoon at four."

He accepted at once, with his air of sweeping aside everything but the
matter in hand. I entered the house with a sense upon me of high
adventure. I could not know that I was playing fate, changing in that
moment the course of Nancy's future.

* * * * *

Dinner was at one o'clock. It seems an impossible hour to people who
always dine at night. But on the Sabbath we Nantucketers eat our
principal meal when we come home from church.

Nancy and Anthony protested as usual. "Of course you can't expect us to
dress."

Nancy sat down at the table with her hat on, and minus the velvet coat.
She was a bit disheveled and warm from her walk. She had brought in a
great bunch of blue vetch and pale mustard, and we had put it in the
center of the table in a bowl of gray pottery. My dining-room is in gray
and white and old mahogany, and Nancy had had an eye to its coloring
when she picked the flowers. They would not have fitted in with the
decorative scheme of my library, which is keyed up, or down, to an
antique vase of turquoise glaze, or to the drawing-room, which is in