“It’s your cap,” she said. “I never can get used to you in a cap. You look such a thorough burglar.”
“Well, what the deuce am I to wear?” He shot up one grey eyebrow and wrinkled his nose. “It’s a very good cap, too. Very fine specimen of its kind. It’s got a very rich white satin lining.” He paused. He declaimed, as he had hundreds of times before at this stage. “Rich and rare were the gems she wore.”
But she was thinking he really was childishly proud of the white satin lining. He would like to have taken off his cap and made her feel it. “Feel the quality!” How often had she rubbed between finger and thumb his coat, his shirt cuff, tie, sock, linen handkerchief, while he said that.
She slipped down more deeply into her chair.
And the little steamer pressed on, pitching gently, over the grey, unbroken, gently-moving water, that was veiled with slanting rain.
Far out, as though idly, listlessly, gulls were flying. Now they settled on the waves, now they beat up into the rainy air, and shone against the pale sky like the lights within a pearl. They looked cold and lonely. How lonely it will be when we have passed by, she thought. There will be nothing but the waves and those birds and rain falling.
She gazed through the rust-spotted railing along which big drops trembled, until suddenly she shut her lips. It was as if a warning voice inside her had said, “Don’t look!”
“No, I won’t,” she decided. “It’s too depressing, much too depressing.”
But immediately, she opened her eyes and looked again. Lonely birds, water lifting, white pale sky—how were they changed?
And it seemed to her there was a presence far out there, between the sky and the water; someone very desolate and longing watched them pass and cried as if to stop them—but cried to her alone.