"There's a shower coming," said Thrale. They stood quietly and let the sharp spatter of rain beat in their faces, and then the shadow of the storm moved on and the horizon line was clear again. "That's a queer cloud out there," said Eileen. "Is it another shower?" She pointed to a tiny blur on the far rim of the sea. "It is queer," said Thrale. "It's so precisely like the smoke of a steamer." For a few seconds they gazed in intent silence. "It's getting bigger," broke out Eileen, suddenly excited. "What is it, Jasper?" "I don't know. I can't make it out," he said. He moved away from her and shaded his eyes from the glare of the momentarily cloudless sky. "I can't make it out," he repeated mechanically. The blur was widening into a grey-black smudge, into a vaguely diffused smear with a darker centre. "With the wind blowing towards us----" said Jasper, and broke off. "Yes, yes--what?" asked Eileen, and then as he did not answer, she gripped his arm and repeated importunately. "What? Jasper, what? With the wind blowing towards us?" "By God it is," he said in a low voice, disregarding her question. "By God it is," he repeated, and then a third time, "It is." "Oh! what, what? Do answer me! I can't see!" pleaded Eileen. But still he did not answer. He stood like a rock and stared without wavering at the growing cloud on the horizon. And then the cloud began to grow more diffused, to die away, and Eileen could see tiny indentations on the sky line, indentations which pushed up and presently revealed themselves as attached to a little black speck in the remotest distance. "Oh, Jasper!" she cried, and her eyes filled with inexplicable tears, so that she could see only a misty field of troubled blue. "It's a liner," said Jasper at last, turning to her. He looked puzzled and his eyes stared through her. "And its coming from America. Do you suppose the American women----" The boat was revealed now. They could see the shape of her, the high deck, the two tall funnels and the three masts. She was passing across, fifteen miles or so to the south of them, making up Channel. For a moment they felt like shipwrecked sailors on a lonely island, who see a vessel pass beyond hail. "Oh, Jasper, what can it be?" Eileen besought him. "It's a White Star boat," he said, and he still spoke as if his mind was far away. "Is it possible, is it anyway possible that America has survived? Is it possible that there is traffic between America and Europe, and that they pass us by for fear of infection? How do we know that vessels haven't been passing up the Channel for months past? Why should we think that this is the first?" "It is the first," proclaimed Eileen. "I feel it. Oh, let us hurry. Let us ride and ride as fast as we can to Plymouth or Southampton. I know they'll be coming to Plymouth or Southampton. Men, Jasper, men! No women would dare to run a boat at that pace. See how fast she is going. Oh hurry, hurry!"