Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
blue afternoon.

'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over
again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.

'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to
herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.

They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the
swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark head
and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over
some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low
stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer was
sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing
straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretching
forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.

'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
indifference.