With the coming of dawn the storm passed away northwards, across a sea snow-
flecked and still panting with its fury, and leaving behind many traces of its
violence, even upon these waste and empty places. A lurid sunrise gave little
promise of better weather, but by six o'clock the wind had fallen, and the full tide
was swelling the creeks. On a sand-bank, far down amongst the marshes,
Jeanne stood hatless, with her hair streaming in the breeze, her face turned
seaward, her eyes full of an unexpected joy. Everywhere she saw traces of the
havoc wrought in the night. The tall rushes lay broken and prostrate upon the
ground; the beach was strewn with timber from the breaking up of an ancient
wreck. Eyes more accustomed than hers to the outline of the country could have
seen inland dismantled cottages and unroofed sheds, groups of still frightened
and restive cattle, a snapped flagstaff, a fallen tree. But Jeanne knew none of
these things. Her face was turned towards the ocean and the rising sun. She felt
the sting of the sea wind upon her cheeks, all the nameless exhilaration of the
early morning sweetness. Far out seaward the long breakers, snow-flecked and
white crested, came rolling in with a long, monotonous murmur toward the land.
Above, the grey sky was changing into blue. Almost directly over her head, rising
higher and higher in little circles, a lark was singing. Jeanne half closed her eyes
and stood still, engrossed by the unexpected beauty of her surroundings. Then
suddenly a voice came travelling to her from across the marshes.
She turned round unwillingly, and with a vague feeling of irritation against this
interruption, which seemed to her so inopportune, and in turning round she
realized at once that her period of absorption must have lasted a good deal
longer than she had had any idea of. She had walked straight across the
marshes towards the little hillock on which she stood, but the way by which she
had come was no longer visible. The swelling tide had circled round through
some unseen channel, and was creeping now into the land by many creeks and
narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a
smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a
