Victor sent his girl down to Nataly, with a summons to hurry up and see sunlight over the waters.  Nataly came; she looked, and the outer wakened the inner, she let the light look in on her, her old feelings danced to her eyes like a, string of bubbles in ascent.  ’Victor, Victor, it seems only yesterday that we crossed, twelve years back—­was it?—­and in May, and saw the shoal of porpoises, and five minutes after, Dieppe in view.  Dear French people!  I share your love for France.’

’Home of our holidays!—­the “drives”; and they may be the happiest.  And fifty minutes later we were off the harbour; and Natata landed, a stranger; and at night she was the heroine of the town.’

Victor turned to a stately gentleman and passed his name to Nataly:  ’Sir Rodwell Balchington, a neighbour of Lakelands!  She understood that Lady Grace Halley was acquainted with Sir Rodwell:—­hence this dash of brine to her lips while she was drinking of happy memories, and Victor evidently was pluming himself upon his usual luck in the fortuitous encounter with an influential neighbour of Lakelands.  He told Sir Rodwell the story of how they had met in the salle a manger of the hotel the impresario of a Concert in the town, who had in his hand the doctor’s certificate of the incapacity of the chief cantatrice to appear, and waved it, within a step of suicide.  ’Well, to be brief, my wife—­“noble dame Anglaise,” as the man announced her on the Concert platform, undertook one of the songs, and sang another of her own-pure contralto voice, as you will say; with the result that there was a perfect tumult of enthusiasm.  Next day, the waiters of the hotel presented her with a bouquet of Spring flowers, white, and central violets.  It was in the Paris papers, under the heading:  Une amie d’outre Manche—­I think that was it?’ he asked Nataly.

‘I forget,’ said she.

He glanced at her:  a cloud had risen.  He rallied her, spoke of the old Norman silver cross which the manager of the Concert had sent, humbly imploring her to accept the small memento of his gratitude.  She nodded an excellent artificial brightness.

And there was the coast of France under young sunlight over the waters.  Once more her oft-petitioning wish through the years, that she had entered the ranks of professional singers, upon whom the moral scrutiny is not so microscopic, invaded her, resembling a tide-swell into rock-caves, which have been filled before and left to emptiness, and will be left to emptiness again.  Nataly had the intimation visiting us when, in a decline of physical power, the mind’s ready vivacity to conjure illusions forsakes us; and it was, of a wall ahead, and a force impelling her against it, and no hope of deviation.  And this is the featureless thing, Destiny; not without eyes, if we have a conscience to throw them into it to look at us.

Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others on the vessel, from an active breath of the salt prompting to healthy hunger; and hardly less from the splendour of the low full sunlight on the waters, the skimming and dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from under the globe of fire.