He knew them at once by their general appearance--the man by a peculiar gesture of raising his hat and wiping his forehead, the lady by the way she carried her parasol, the stick resting on her shoulder while she held the point of one of the ribs. And, recognising them he had a singular light-headed sensation, as though he would presently be floating dizzily out of his chair, and swept away over the sea.... He fell back, feeling strangely weary, and dazzling sparks danced before his fixed gaze like glittering notes of interrogation. What was to be done? Could he devise some ingenious excuse and try to tempt Frank to leave the place, to fly? Oh! how small the world was! Was it for this that they had wandered over the globe, never knowing any rest--to meet, at their very first halting-place, the two beings he most dreaded? Was this accident or Fatality? Yes, Fatality! But then--was he really afraid?
And in his dejection he felt quite sure that he was afraid of nothing; that he was profoundly indifferent, full of an intolerable weariness of self-torture. He was too tired to feel alarm; he would wait and see what would happen. It must come. There was no escape. It was Fatality. It was rest to sit there, motionless, inert, will-less, with the wide silver-grey waters before him, waiting for what might happen. To struggle no more for his own ends, to fear no more, but to wait patiently and for ever. It must come, like the tide from the ocean; it must cover him, as the surf covers the sands--and then go down again, and perhaps drag him with it, drowned and dead. A wave of that flood would wash over him and stop his breath--and more waves would follow--endlessly. A senseless tide--a fruitless eternity.
"I wish I did not feel it so acutely," he painfully thought. "It is too silly to feel it so. Perhaps nothing will come of it, and I shall live to be a hundred, in peace and contentment. Still, this is undeniable, this is a fact: they are there! They are here! But--if It were really coming I should not feel it. Nothing happens but the unexpected. It is mere nervous weakness, over-tension. Nothing can really matter to me; nothing matters. The air is lovely and pleasantly soft; there floats a cloud. And I will just sit still, without fear, quite at my ease. There they are again!--The seamews fly low.--I will wait, wait.... Those boys are playing in that boat; what folly! They will have it over!"