She could not go on, but once more she straightened her back and refused to break down.

“I’ll be able to think of you every moment I wear them,” said Hornblower. He struggled into the gloves despite the handicap of the bag he was carrying; they were splendid thick woollen gloves, each with separate thumb and forefinger.

“They fit me to perfection. I thank you for the kind thought, dear.”

Now they were at the head of the steep slope down the Hard, and this horrible ordeal would soon be over.

“You have the seventeen pounds safely?” asked Hornblower—an unnecessary question.

“Yes, thank you, dearest. I fear it is too much—”

“And you’ll be able to draw my monthly half pay,” went on Hornblower harshly, to keep the emotion from his voice, and then, realizing how harshly, he continued. “It is time to say good-bye now, darling.”

He had forced himself to use that unaccustomed last word. The water level was far up the Hard; that meant, as he had known when he had given the orders, that the tide was at the flood. He would be able to take advantage of the ebb.

“Darling!” said Maria, turning to him and lifting up her face to him in its hood.

He kissed her; down at the water’s edge there was the familiar rattle of oars on thwarts, and the sound of male voices, as his boat’s crew perceived the two shadowy figures on the Hard. Maria heard those sounds as clearly as Hornblower did, and she quickly snatched away from him the cold lips she had raised to his.

“Good-bye, my angel.”

There was nothing else to say now, nothing else to do; this was the end of this brief experience. He turned his back on Maria; he turned his back on peace and on civilian married life and walked down towards war.

Chapter III