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seeing it, still thinking about the letter; deciding, finally, to sleep on it, not spoil her first evening with her aunt by bringing the matter up. There was plenty of time ... a whole year ...
    Soon her aunt came back, and showed her to a pretty, chintzy bedroom with a big window looking towards the seaward end of the lagoon, where the big breakers crashed and roared.
    The view was lovely; but Alix saw it through a sudden mist of tears. She shook them away impatiently.
    Resolutely, when her aunt had left her alone, she began to unpack. She chose a pretty silk dress to wear for dinner, brushed out her curly light brown hair, and re-did her nail varnish.
    The heat of her bath—in water that was clear brown, straight, her aunt told her, from a mountain stream — soothed and relaxed her. She began to feel less desolate. Tomorrow things would look differently, perhaps. Tomorrow she would put her problem to her aunt, a wise old bird with two happy marriages to her credit, and so well equipped to advise her. Tomorrow was another day...

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    ALIX got up early next morning, as soon as she had drunk the tea Effelina brought in to her on the stroke of seven. The coloured girl was all smiles again—perhaps Aunt Drusilla had already settled her problems for her ...
    In spite of her resolution Alix had slept badly, lying awake half the night, indeed, thinking about Bernard’s letter and its implications for herself.
    At one point she had even found herself wondering just how much she was in love with Bernard. What would it mean to me, she asked herself, if I were to lose him now?
    Then she had felt ashamed. She had accused herself of showing a sad lack of faith in her lover. Just because their love had perhaps been pushed into the background a little by two years of separation, was that any reason for assuming it wasn’t just as warm and vital as ever?
    And then, tossing and turning and thumping Aunt
    Drusilla’s well-stuffed pillows, she had admitted that she just didn’t know ...
    Theirs had been an impetuous, rather disjointed courtship, carried on in snatches between hoeing and weeding, planting and gathering crops. There hadn’t been much time, at the Priory, for ardour. It was surprising—looking back now on those hectically busy days — that Bernard had managed to find an opportunity to propose.
    But he had—one day when she was trimming and tying tomato plants.
    He had come racing into the kitchen garden to tell her of his godfather’s legacy and his idea of emigrating to Rhodesia. And when she had told him what a splendid idea she thought it, he had looked at her with those blue, long-lashed eyes of his and said gruffly, “We could afford to marry on it, Alix, if you like—after I’ve trained.”
    She couldn’t quite recapture, now, the rush of warm feeling that had led her to put her arms round him, lift her face to his kiss, and say frankly, “I’d love that, Bernard—if you redly mean it.”
    “I mean it—you darling.”
    The next day he had slipped the signet ring into her hand and told her to wear it for him till he could give her the wacking big diamond she deserved.
    She had felt rather maternal, somehow, over the loan of the ring. Dear Bernard, she had thought tenderly. He was twenty-one then, not quite a year younger than herself, but a good deal older-looking. They had been very happy with each other. And if Alix hadn’t exactly felt like swooning with delight when Bernard kissed her, she had found it very enjoyable. She wasn’t, anyway, a swooner.
    Now she wondered if they hadn’t rushed too precipitately into an engagement involving so long a parting. She recalled the old saying about absence m akin g the heart grow fonder ... of somebody else ...
    Some time in the night a wind got up and blew in from the sea. It tore and battered at the house for a while, then died away on a sigh. Alix sighed too. When she got up to look out of her window she saw that the tide had ebbed right