"Come, Sheila," he said in the old paternal way to which she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their friendship, "I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong: I have seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and to myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?"
She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still doubtful as to what she should do.
"You look on me as an intermeddler," he said with a smile.
"No, no," she said: "you have always been our best friend."
"But I have intermeddled none the less. Don't you remember when I told you I was prepared to accept the consequences?"
"And once having begun to intermeddle, I can't stop, don't you see? Now, Sheila, you'll be a good little girl and do what I tell you. You'll take the boat a long way out: we'll put her head round, take down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles, and then we'll see what can be done."
She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure her was right for her to do.
How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King's road and all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were fore-shortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.