Gilbart saw that, though tearless, her eyes wore traces of tears—­no redness, but some swelling of the lids, with dark semicircles underneath.

“To them,” he went on, nodding toward the holiday-keepers, “it’s only regatta day.  To them she’s only a passing ship helping to make up the pretty scene.  They know nothing of the gallant hearts she carries or the sore ones she leaves behind.  If they knew, I wonder if they’d care?  The ordinary Anglo-Saxon has so little imagination!”

She was staring at him now, and at length seemed to understand.  But with understanding there grew in her eyes a look of anger, almost of repugnance.  “Oh, please go away!” she said.

He lifted his hat and obeyed; indeed, he walked off to the farthest end of the Hoe.  He was hurt.  He had a thin-skinned vanity, and hated to look small even before a stranger.  That snub poisoned his morning, and although he looked at the yachts, his mind ran all the time upon the encounter.  To be sure he had brought it upon himself, but he preferred to consider that he had meant kindly—­had obviously meant kindly.  He tried to invent a retort,—­a gentle, dignified retort which would have touched her to a regret for her injustice—­nothing more.  Perhaps it was not yet too late to return and convey his protest under a delicate apology; or perhaps the mere sight of him, casually passing, might move her to make amends.  He even strolled back some way with this idea, but she had disappeared.

The Berenice had vanished too; around Penlee Point no doubt.  He remembered the field-glasses slung in a case by his hip and was fumbling with the leather strap when a drop of rain fell on his hand, the herald of a smart shower.  A dark squall came whistling down the Hamoaze; and standing there in the fringe of it he saw it strike and spread itself out like a fan over the open Sound at his feet, blotting the sparkle out of the water, while some of the small boats heeled to it and others ran up into the wind and lay shaking.  It was over in five minutes, and the sun broke out again before the rain ceased falling; but Gilbart decided that there was more to follow.  He had not come out to keep holiday, and an unfinished manuscript waited for him in his lodgings—­an address on True Manliness, to be delivered two evenings hence in the Mission Room to lads under eighteen.  Though he delivered them without manuscript, Gilbart always prepared his addresses carefully and kept the fair copies in his desk.  He lived in hope of being reported some day, and then—­who could say but a book might be called for?

His lodgings lay midway down a long, dreary street of small houses, each with a small yard at the back, each built of brick and stuccoed, all as like as peas, all inhabited by dockyardsmen or the families of gunners, artificers, and petty officers in the navy.  Prospect Place was its deceptive name, and it ran parallel with three precisely similar thoroughfares—­Grafton Place, Alderney Place, and Belvedere Avenue.  These four—­with a cross-street, where the Mission Room stood facing a pawnbroker’s—­comprised Gilbart’s field of labour.