sincerity.

At seven I was watching a cab packed with my personal luggage and the
collection of unwieldy and incongruous packages that my shopping had
drawn down on me. Two deviations after that wretched prismatic
compass--which I obtained in the end secondhand, _faute de mieux_,
near Victoria, at one of those showy shops which look like jewellers'
and are really pawnbrokers'--nearly caused me to miss my train. But
at 8.30 I had shaken off the dust of London from my feet, and at
10.30 1 was, as I have announced, pacing the deck of a Flushing
steamer, adrift on this fatuous holiday in the far Baltic.

An air from the west, cooled by a midday thunderstorm, followed the
steamer as she slid through the calm channels of the Thames estuary,
passed the cordon of scintillating lightships that watch over the
sea-roads to the imperial city like pickets round a sleeping army,
and slipped out into the dark spaces of the North Sea. Stars were
bright, summer scents from the Kent cliffs mingled coyly with vulgar
steamer-smells; the summer weather held Immutably. Nature, for her
part, seemed resolved to be no party to my penance, but to be
imperturbably bent on shedding mild ridicule over my wrongs. An
irresistible sense of peace and detachment, combined with that
delicious physical awakening that pulses through the nerve-sick
townsman when city airs and bald routine are left behind him,
combined to provide me, however thankless a subject, with a solid
background of resignation. Stowing this safely away, I could
calculate my intentions with cold egotism. If the weather held I
might pass a not intolerable fortnight with Davies. When it broke up,
as it was sure to, I could easily excuse myself from the pursuit of
the problematical ducks; the wintry logic of facts would, in any