meadow. A breadth of water gleamed. Already the convolvulus moth was
spinning over the flowers. Orange and purple, nasturtium and cherry pie,
were washed into the twilight, but the tobacco plant and the passion
flower, over which the great moth spun, were white as china. The rooks
creaked their wings together on the tree-tops, and were settling down
for sleep when, far off, a familiar sound shook and trembled--increased
--fairly dinned in their ears--scared sleepy wings into the air again--
the dinner bell at the house.

After six days of salt wind, rain, and sun, Jacob Flanders had put on a
dinner jacket. The discreet black object had made its appearance now and
then in the boat among tins, pickles, preserved meats, and as the voyage
went on had become more and more irrelevant, hardly to be believed in.
And now, the world being stable, lit by candle-light, the dinner jacket
alone preserved him. He could not be sufficiently thankful. Even so his
neck, wrists, and face were exposed without cover, and his whole person,
whether exposed or not, tingled and glowed so as to make even black
cloth an imperfect screen. He drew back the great red hand that lay on
the table-cloth. Surreptitiously it closed upon slim glasses and curved
silver forks. The bones of the cutlets were decorated with pink frills-
and yesterday he had gnawn ham from the bone! Opposite him were hazy,
semi-transparent shapes of yellow and blue. Behind them, again, was the
grey-green garden, and among the pear-shaped leaves of the escallonia
fishing-boats seemed caught and suspended. A sailing ship slowly drew
past the women's backs. Two or three figures crossed the terrace hastily
in the dusk. The door opened and shut. Nothing settled or stayed
unbroken. Like oars rowing now this side, now that, were the sentences
that came now here, now there, from either side of the table.

"Oh, Clara, Clara!" exclaimed Mrs. Durrant, and Timothy Durrant adding,