How deep and fathomless it seemed, this running sea! What was it she had dropped there?
In my mind's eye I saw a most pathetic little bundle made of love-letters; I pictured them tied with a pretty faded ribbon; there would be dried flowers, each one a momento of some happy occasion.

I could fancy the dried roses, the withered forget-me-nots, the violets, with some faint odor lingering still around them.

Then there would be a valentine, perhaps two or three; a photograph, and probably an engagement ring.

She had flung them away into the depths of the sea, and only Heaven knows what hopes and love she had flung with them! I could understand now what that cry meant--"If I dare--if I dare!" It meant that if she dare she would fling herself into the sea after them! How many hopes had been flung, like hers, into those black depths! Then I came to the conclusion that I was, to say the least of it, a simpleton to waste so much time and thought about another person's affairs.
I remember that, as I walked slowly down the pier, I met several people, and that I felt a glow of pleasure at the thought that some people had the good sense to prefer the Chain Pier.

And then I went home.
A game at billiards, a long chat in the smoke-room, ought to have distracted my mind from the little incident I had witnessed, but it did not.