A magic touch swept aside the years and revealed the
old, glad days of his boyhood.
Merefleet pushed away his plate and sat with fixed eyes, fascinated by
the rosy vision. They were side by side in a fishing-smack, he and the
playmate of his childhood. There was an old fisherman in charge with
grizzled hair, whose name, he recollected without effort, was Quiller.
He was showing the little maid how to tie a knot that was warranted never
to come undone.
Merefleet watched the ardent, flushed face with a deep reverence. He had
not seen it so vividly since the day he had kissed it for the last time
and gone forth into the seething sea of life to fight the whirlpools.
Well, he had emerged triumphant so far as earthly success went. He had
breasted the tide and risen above the billows. He was wealthy, and he was
celebrated. No mortal power rose up in his path to baulk him of his
desire. Only desire itself had failed him, and ambition had become
mockery.
For twenty years he had not had time to stop and think. For twenty years
he had wrestled ceaselessly with the panting crowd. He had bartered away
the best years of his life to the gold god, and he was satiated with the
success of this transaction.
In all that time he had not mourned, as he mourned to-night, the loss of
the twin-sister who had been as his second and better self. He had not
realised till he sat alone in the place, where as a boy he had never
known solitude, how utterly flat and undesirable was the future that
stretched out like a trackless desert at his feet.
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