George and Marguerite sat close together near the prow, saying little, the one waiting to spring, the other to suffer onslaught.  It was in Lambeth Reach that the broad, brimming river challenged and seized George’s imagination.  A gusty, warm, south-west wind met the rushing tide and blew it up into foamy waves.  The wind was powerful, but the tide was irresistible.  Far away, Land’s End having divided the Atlantic surge, that same wind was furiously driving vast waters up the English Channel and round the Forelands, and also vast waters up the west coast of Britain.  The twin surges had met again in the outer estuary of the Thames and joined their terrific impulses to defy the very wind which had given them strength, and the mighty flux swept with unregarding power through the mushroom city whose existence on its banks was a transient episode in the everlasting life of the river.

The river seemed to threaten the city that had confined it in stone.  And George, in the background of his mind, which was obsessed by the tormenting enigma of the girl by his side, also threatened the city.  With the uncompromising arrogance of the student who has newly acquired critical ideas, he estimated and judged it.  He cursed the Tate Gallery and utterly damned Doulton’s works.  He sternly approved Lambeth Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge, and St. Paul’s.  He cursed St. Thomas’s Hospital and the hotels.  He patronized New Scotland Yard.  The “Isambard Brunel” penetrated more and more into the heart of the city, fighting for every yard of her progress.  Flags stood out straight in the blue sky traversed by swift white clouds.  Huge rudder-less barges, each with a dwarf in the stern struggling at a giant’s oar, were borne westwards broadside on like straws upon the surface of a hurrying brook.  A launch with an orchestra on board flew gaily past.  Tugs with a serpentine tail of craft threaded perilously through the increasing traffic.  Railway trains, cabs, coloured omnibuses, cyclists, and footfarers mingled in and complicated the scene.  Then the first ocean-going steamer appeared, belittling all else.  And then the calm, pale beauty of the custom-house at last humbled George, and for an instant made him think that he could never do anything worth doing.  His pride leapt up, unconquerable.  The ocean-going steamers, as they multiplied on the river, roused in him wild and painful longings to rush to the ends of the earth and gorge himself on the immense feast which the great romantic earth had to offer.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed passionately.  “I’d give something to go to Japan.”

“Would you?” Marguerite answered with mildness.  She had not the least notion of what he was feeling.  Her voice responded to him, but her imagination did not respond.  True, as he had always known, she had no ambition!  The critical quality of his mood developed.  The imperious impulse came to take her to task.