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the curve of the bay with its shoaling waters which changed continually under sun and cloud. The cliff had been none too safe fifty years ago, and though the drop was no more than some fifteen to twenty feet, Dale’s father had fenced it with a low stone wall broken only where a flight of steps ran down to the bathing beach.
    Lisle sat down on the coping and looked out across the water. It was half past five, and the sun slanting over Tane Head. Presently it would go down there and the shadow of the headland spread like spilled ink right over until it touched the very foot of the cliff. But for the moment the water was all clear and bright, and the shadow only a line on the farther side of the bay. The day had been hot, but the wind blew fresh off the sea. At the first touch of it she shivered a little in her green linen dress, and then forgot whether she was hot or cold. Dale was angry. She had known very well that he would be angry. Even if she had told him everything, he would still have been angry with her for running away. Angry — and contemptuous. The contempt hurt more than the anger, and she had no defence against it, because if Dale despised her, she also despised herself. She had run away when she ought to have stayed and outfaced calumny with the strength of her confidence and trust. She looked across the water and her eyes filled slowly with stinging tears. She was bitterly ashamed and unhappy, but behind her pain and misery there was still that something which was fear.
    She sat there for a long time, with the shadow creeping nearer across the water and the blue losing colour and shading imperceptibly into grey. Someone came up behind her and stood there for a while before he said her name. As she turned round startled, she saw that it was Rafe.
    He had pulled on a sweater over his white tennis shirt, and he was holding out a coat all gay stripes and checks of green and yellow on a cream ground.
    “This is yours, isn’t it? What a fool you are to come down here in that thin dress without a wrap — and after the way you looked yesterday.”
    “I wasn’t cold.” But she shivered as she spoke.
    Rafe made a face at her.
    “Are you trying to make yourself ill? Or don’t you have to try? Here — put the thing on. What’s the matter with you?”
    “Nothing.”
    She was fastening the coat. It felt soft and warm, as if all the gay colours were radiating some warmth of their own. Dale liked colour, and she had bought the coat — for him — with a little uncertainty, because she really liked herself best in softer shades. But now she was glad of the colours. She buttoned up the coat without looking at Rafe or thinking of him.
    He pulled her down again on to the flat coping and sat beside her, his back to Tane Head. His eyes were very bright, and the wind caught his hair.
    “What’s all this about, my dear?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Storm in a teacup? Probably — most things are.” He sang in a whispered tenor: “ ‘Car ici-bas tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.’ That’s the way it goes, and ‘The sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep.’ I can do a lot more maudlin quotations like that. But meanwhile what’s getting you? You came home yesterday like a death’s head escaped from the feast, and just as you begin to cheer up a little Dale comes home and you go all to bits again. What’s up?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Don’t be a fool!” He snatched both her hands and swung them up and down. “Quit looking like a hypnotised sheep and tell me what happened at the Cranes’.”
    “Really, Rafe—”
    “Yes, really. I want to know, and I mean to know. Come along — you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve got it off your chest. Did some sweet womanly soul tell you that Dale had been Marian’s lover?” His eyes danced maliciously. “It isn’t true, you know, but I suppose you swallowed it whole and rushed home to meditate divorce.”
    If he wanted to rouse her he certainly succeeded. She jerked her