Mr. Fatigay, who had till then been yearning to starboard, for his love lay there, now felt his heart swing with the swinging needle, and he yearned proportionately to port. Ah, god! The moment when, in its changing course, the swift ship pointed, stern to stem, straight to “The Woodlands,” Stotfield nr. Haslemere, where sate Miss Amy Flint, all this particular microcosm’s desire!

When, said his pocket compass, that moment had arrived, Mr. Fatigay, for just so long, was accorded the ineffable bliss of being able to yearn, as it were, full-steam ahead. How his poor heart then rose up in his breast, and began to throb and strain to burst free, that it might fly with the velocity of a cannonball (but it was as soft and spicy as a plum pudding) straight to the bosom of his beloved!

But they were to call at Gib, and the course soon fell away some degrees to starboard, so that our hero’s heart lost the added impetus of the steamer’s straight direction, and it settled into an uneasy stillness again, as a dog’s does when his master turns away from the warren.

Now the waves took on a brisker blue, and smokes were seen everywhere on the seaward horizon, and the sails of fishing fleets towards the shore. Electric light cables, dwarfed to the likeness of one-strand wire fences, switchbacked along the undulating coast; corks and orange peel met them on the oil-streaked tide: They were entering the English Channel. Everyone ran suddenly to the side. “There! That’s it! There! England! Home!”

“Never forget this day,” said a white-haired old commissioner to his son, a bright-faced lad coming home from South Africa for the first time to begin his education at one of our great schools. “That,” said he, pointing to the coast of Devon, “is England.”

“But, Daddy,” replied the youngster in amazement, for he had read his Phillpotts, “it looks like those huts on the goldfields.”

A group of South Africans, full of patriotic nostalgia for their colony, stared frowningly at the tactless lad.

“Our Motherland,” replied his father, with a dignified glance at these, “may possess neither gold nor fields, but always remember, my boy, that it leads the whole world in building sites.

“If it reminds you of a mining camp,” he added, “you must bear in mind that a camp is the most fitting home for heroes, and that it is from surroundings like these that men have risen to go forth to battle, scornful of the horrors of the trenches and careless of the imminence of death.”

“Good-bye, dear,” whispered a number of straight-limbed, clear-eyed young matrons, glancing tenderly at their well-tubbed squires from under their level brows. “We had better say good-bye now. I expect my husband will be waiting on the quay.”

Now the port lay immediately before them, and the hum of life in its narrow streets drifted out on the April breeze. The intermittent nature of this vehicle made the medley of wheels, taxi horns, and voices appear to rise and fall, like the breathing of some vast organism. Emily, feeling incredibly small and brown, peered forth timidly from her niche in the great wall of the floating palace. The crowd on the quay surged forward like a gathering wave, a thin surf of handkerchiefs breaking out upon its crest. A broken spray of self-conscious shouts leapt weakly at the steep side of the liner and drizzled back on the upturned faces whence it had sprung.

A tiny shudder ran through the vast bulk of the ship, and it died happily, and, as the strongest appear weak and small in death, when we are put in mind of the lives they have come through, so it suddenly became a cockleshell that had come five thousand miles, across waters in many places over a mile in depth. And its blissful end, and the pathos of its delivery, and the slackening within each passenger of some strain, which had, it now seemed, all the while been nervously seconding the efforts of the engines — all this moved their hearts so deeply that, if a hymn of thanksgiving had then been struck up, there is little doubt but that many would have joined in under their breaths.

Sirens, which seemed severely meant for everyone, now began to sound, quiet words of command were issued, a rattle of gangways was heard, cries of “There he is! Jim, Jim!” arose, and the crowd on the boat and the crowd on the quay rushed together like mouths in a ravenous kiss.

Now up and down among the cleaving throngs ran Mr. Fatigay, dragging Emily tripping and stumbling behind him, and he was looking into every face like a dog that seeks its master.

“Amy! Amy! Where can she be? I say! I wonder where she can be.”

As he runs back and forth, growing white and breathless, banging into people, trying to look cool and collected, then not caring how he looks, risking a faint “coo-ee,” covering the same ground three or four times over, rushing up to distant figures of the most impossible shapes and sizes, getting something in his eye, whispering intently to the grim custodian of ‘Ladies’, and performing a hundred heartbreaking, mad tricks — that he will blush for to his dying day — let us despise not him alone, but all of us, both those who are capable of such besottedness and those who are not. For the heart is, in a sense, like the Prince of Wales; we would not have it cut in stone, yet how pathetic it is, when, as at Wembley, we see it modeled in butter.

When he had sought her until he was ready to drop, he acknowledged despairingly that she could not have come aboard, and he made haste down the gangway onto the quay, where he commenced his search anew. Soon he saw a Cook’s man standing magnificently apart, and, hurrying up to him, he said:

“Excuse me, but have you seen a lady anywhere — a small dark lady — young — looking for anyone?”

“Well, sir, there’s a good many,” replied the humane official. “Can that be her, perhaps?”

But Mr. Fatigay, turning to follow his glance, saw only Emily, hastening to overtake him with all the speed she might.

Shaking his head sadly, he reached out, and, grasping the poor chimp by the hand, he scurried her off with him. At last, having given up all hope, he drifted out under the entrance arch, to where cars and taxis were ranked in the dock road. And there, in a taxi drawn up by the curb, sat Miss Amy Flint, waiting her love’s appearance.

“Amy!”

“Alfred! How brown you’re looking! And yet . . . just the same. Have you had a wonderful voyage?”

“Amy!”

“Well? Have I changed so much? Do you think you’ll still like me? Have you got lots to tell me?”

“Amy!”

“Well, if I haven’t changed outwardly, I’ve altered a good deal within. You’ll have to be very nice and kind and understanding with your wayward girl. But what a time you’ve been! Most of the people seem to have come out half an hour ago.