the island to inspect the excavations which General Donzelot was undertaking there. Jason and his officers had been invited but had declined, pleading the urgency of the repairs to the ship, and Marianne, having waited all day in eager anticipation of the evening which would bring her reluctant lover to her, was hard put to it to conceal her disappointment and maintain a smiling face and an air of interest in what her neighbours were saying to her. The left-hand neighbour, at least, for on her right she had General Donzelot who was a man of few words. Like most men of action, Donzelot hated wasting time in conversation. He was polite and friendly but Marianne could have sworn that he shared her own opinion of this dinner as nothing but a tiresome duty.
Her other neighbour, by contrast, was indefatigable. He was a local notable whose name she had already forgotten, and he entertained her, in the most gruesome detail, with an account of the epic battles he had fought in his younger days against the ferocious troops of the Pasha of Yannina during the Souliot rising. Now, if there was one thing Marianne loathed, it was listening to people recounting their experiences of war. She had had more than enough of that at Napoleon's court where there was scarcely a man without a tale to tell.
Consequently it was with a sense of relief that she regained her own room when the evening came to an end at last and delivered herself up to Agathe's hands to be divested of her finery. Enveloped in a lace-trimmed wrapper of fine lawn, she was settled on a low chair to have her hair brushed for the night.
'Monsieur de Jolival is not back yet?' she asked Agathe who was busy with two brushes shaking out the hair which had been bound up all day long.
'No, my lady. At least, that is to say he came in while you were all at dinner, just to change. And I must say, he needed to! His clothes were all white with dust. He said not to disturb anyone on his account because he was going straight out again and would get his dinner down at the harbour.'
Marianne closed her eyes, satisfied, and abandoned herself to her maid's deft fingers with a deep sense of reassurance. Jolival was doing his best for her, she was certain. He had not gone down to the harbour for the sake of entertainment.
After a few minutes she told Agathe that she might stop now and go to bed.
'Don't you want me to plait your hair for you, my lady?'
'No, thank you, Agathe. I'll leave it loose tonight. I've a trifle of a headache and would rather be alone. I shan't go to bed yet.'
When the girl, who was accustomed to asking no questions, had dropped a curtsy and left her, Marianne went to the long window opening on to a small balcony and, taking down the screen of mosquito netting, stepped outside. She felt stifled and in need of air. The screens were a good protection against the insects but they also seemed to prevent the free circulation of air.
Tucking her hands into the wide sleeves of her wrapper, she moved across the balcony. It was much warmer than it had been the night before. Not a breath of wind had come at nightfall to cool the parching atmosphere. Earlier, at dinner, she had felt as if her satin dress were sticking to her skin. Even the stone balustrade on which she was leaning was still warm.
Out of doors, though, the night was glorious: an eastern darkness, rich with stars and heavy with perfume, ringing with the rhythmic note of cicadas. Down below, thousands of glow-worms made a second firmament of the dark shapes of trees and shrubs, while at the foot of the valley the sea gleamed softly, a silvered triangle framed by the tall spires of cypress trees. Except for the plaintive scraping of the cicadas and the faint swish of the sea on the pebbled shore, there was not a sound to be heard.
That little patch of water shining at the bottom of the garden suddenly began to exercise a magnetic effect on Marianne. It was so hot that she longed to bathe. The water would be cool and heavenly, soothing away the fever of impatience which had been growing on her all through that dreary dinner.
She hesitated. Not all the servants would be in bed yet. Some were probably still engaged in tidying the rooms which had been used for the party. If she went down and announced her intention of going for a swim they would probably quite certainly think her mad, while if she merely said that she was going for a walk they would probably follow at a discreet distance to make sure that no harm came to such a distinguished visitor.
A preposterous idea occurred to her. In the old days at Selton Hall she had had her own way of leaving her room without anyone's knowing, with the aid of the ivy that covered the walls. The little balcony here was only on the first floor and there were climbing plants rampaging all over it.
'It remains to be seen whether you are still as athletic as you used to be, my girl,' she told herself, 'but anyway it's worth trying.'
Her spirits soared at the thought of the escapade and of a cool swim. Childishly excited, she scampered to her wardrobe, dragged out the simplest dress she could find, a simple lavender print with a ribbon sash, and slipped it on over a pair of drawers. She added a pair of flat-heeled slippers and thus equipped made her way back to the balcony, replacing the mosquito screen carefully behind her. Then she began the descent.
It was divinely simple. She had lost nothing of her old skill and in a few seconds her feet touched the sanded path and she was swallowed up in the overgrown darkness of the garden. The path that followed the course of the stream down to the tiny beach passed quite close to her balcony and she found it without trouble. She was hot after her climb and she sauntered unhurriedly down the sandy slope to the water beneath an overhanging canopy of leaves. The path was like a tunnel, filled with exotic scents, with a lighter patch at the far end, but underneath the trees it was pitch dark.
Suddenly, Marianne came to a stop and listened, her heart beating a little faster. She thought she had caught the sound of a light, furtive footfall behind her. It occurred to her that someone might have seen her come out and followed her and she was tempted to turn back. She waited a few seconds, uncertain what to do, but she heard nothing more and the sea seemed to beckon to her, cool and inviting. She walked on, keeping her ears open and treading as softly as she could but there was no further noise.
'I dreamed it,' she told herself. 'My nerves must be all on edge.'
By the time she got down to the beach, her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. There was no moon but such a multitude of stars that the sky was filled with a milky radiance that threw a faint light on the sea. Quickly she slipped off her clothes and clad only in her long hair, ran straight into the sea. As she plunged forward into the water, she almost cried aloud for joy as the blessed coolness enveloped her. Her parched body seemed to melt and liquefy. She had never known such a delicious bathe. When she remembered swimming as a child in the river that ran through the park at Selton, or from some empty cove on the Devon coast, it was in much colder water, cold enough, frequently, to bring the tears to her eyes. This was just cool enough to be life-giving and caressed her skin like silk. It was clear, too, so limpid that, splashing like a puppy dog, she could see her legs moving under water like a paler shadow.
She rolled over on to her stomach and set out to swim towards the middle of the little bay. Her arms and legs fell automatically into the remembered rhythm and she moved easily through the water, pausing from time to time to float for a moment on her back with eyes half-closed, revelling in her delight. She decided that she would swim until she was tired, a healthy, physical tiredness after which she would sleep like a child.
It was during one of these periodic rests that she became aware of a soft, regular splashing. It was coming closer and she identified the sound at once. Someone else was swimming in the bay. Raising herself up out of the water she peered through the darkness and made out a shadowy figure coming towards her. There was someone there, someone who had followed her, perhaps. She remembered the footsteps she had thought she heard earlier, on the way down. Realizing suddenly the foolishness of coming down to bathe alone like this in the middle of the night in a strange country, she turned to swim back to the shore, but the mysterious swimmer changed direction to cut her off. He was swimming fast and powerfully, clearly seeking to intercept her, and if she continued on her present course in a few more minutes he would have succeeded.
In sudden panic she reacted idiotically and in an attempt to frighten off what she thought must be some unknown enemy, she cried out in Italian:
'Who are you? Go away!'
Her voice died away in a gurgle as she swallowed a mouthful of salt water, but the stranger did not pause. He came on silently towards her, in a silence that was the most frightening part of the whole thing. Then Marianne lost her head completely and tried to escape by swimming straight ahead, making for one of the points of the bay in the hope of reaching land and so eluding her pursuer. Such was her terror that it did not even occur to her to wonder who it was. It crossed her mind that he was probably only a Greek fisherman who could not understand her and might have thought she was in danger, but she dismissed the idea at once. When she had first caught sight of him he had been swimming slowly and quietly, making as little noise as possible, advancing on her almost
