thought it was because you needed to see me. But how unimportant this seems now. Forgive me for putting it in this way, but I can be kindest to you by being plainest. What seemed the necessity of seeing you was really just the wanderlust, or rather the magnetism of my destiny pulling me away. Everything has worked out quite wonderfully. We are getting off the boat here and will fly to Cairo. (If you remember I have always wanted to see the pyramids.) After that we –fly to New York and on to Chicago to meet Angelica's people. (Her father is a big man in the art world, incidentally, and she has a lot of money, though of course that's not important and I didn't even know it at first. She is a marvellous person.) I am sorry, dear Paula, to burden you with this recital of my felicity, but there is no point in delaying the happy news. I know how much you must have been waiting and expecting. Believe me I have thought about your needs. But I think it would be unwise for us to meet now. There is much that it would be hard for Angelica to understand. She is a very unshadowed person, and I have not upset her by any of the grimmer things out of my past. (I say this in case you should ever happen to meet her, though I imagine this is unlikely. We are going on a world tour after the marriage and will probably settle in San Francisco, which will be a good place for my work.) I feel confident that you will forgive this defection on my part. You are a woman of many resources and not given to envy, jealousy or moping. I trust and believe that you will soon be able to rejoice in my good fortune without feeling resentment at my failure to render to you an aid which you may have persuaded yourself that only I could give. May it in some way please you to hear me say: I am happy and feel set free from the past. It is my very earnest wish that you will one day be able to say the same. Eric P.S. Please be sure to destroy this letter. Ducane turned to look at Paula. Paula's face was transformed. It expanded smoothly, blandly, seeming to have increased in area, with eyes and mouth extended, and he realized that she had been laughing. Her face, which had been pinched in behind a narrow mask, was relaxed and shining. As she shuddered again and gasped into laughter Ducane began to laugh too, and they laughed together, rocking to and fro and sending the mottled pebbles rolling down the slope towards the water. At last Paula picked up the letter which had fallen between them and tore it to pieces. She scattered the fragments about her. 'See how soon a bogeyman can be blown away.' 'I see what you mean about absurd!' said Ducane. 'Things seem to happen to Eric on ships!' 'Good old Angelica, God bless her! V 'I think he'd really persuaded himself that I'd asked him to come!' 'Paula, you're out in the sun again,' said Ducane. He took hold of the hem of her yellow dress. 'Yes. John, I can't thank you enough ' 'You don't regret having told me, now?' 'No, no. I know already that it's made a difference, the difference – ' Ducane got up rather stiffly. He pulled his jacket on, pushing up the collar of his shirt and rumpling his hair. He could see Barbara and the twins running along the beach towards them. He said suddenly, 'Paula, do you still love Richard?' 'Yes,' she replied without a second's hesitation. And then began to go on, 'But of course there's no ' 'Why, whatever's the matter? Look at the children. Barbie, what is it, what is it?' 'It's Pierce. He's swum into Gunnar's cave and he says he isn't coming out and he's going to stay there –till the tide comes in, and he means it, I know he means it!' It was extremely quiet inside the cave. Pierce swam breast stroke with long quiet strokes, letting his body glide fish-like through the water with as little exertion as possible. He was dressed in trousers and a jersey and woollen socks and rubber shoes. An electric torch, guaranteed waterproof, was tucked into his trousers pocket and attached to his waist by a string. He was wearing his watch, also waterproof. He was already farther into the cave then he had ever been before and the daylight from the low are of the entrance was becoming dim. He could see before him, almost phosphorescent, the regular movement of his hands breaking the dark surface of the water. He could see nothing of his surroundings. Pierce's intent to spend the duration of a tide inside the cave had become, in the long course of its maturing, so huge and obsessive in his mind that it excluded any explanation in terms of something further. It was certainly connected with Barbara, but it might be truer to say that the idea of the cave had swallowed up the idea of Barbara. A great black dart pointed him into this magnetic darkness. Humiliation and rejection and despair had blended into a thrust of desire which no longer had Barbara for its object. That the ordeal might end in death was an essential part of its authority. Yet the hypothesis of this factual death was almost incidental. The concept of death had been growing in Pierce's mind, an expanding, curiously dazzling object which was not a physical possibility or even a consolation, but the supreme object of love. The distant light from the cave entrance was shut out and Pierce glided into a sphere of total blackness. He checked his stroke and looking over his shoulder could see a suggestion of light upon the water but no low whitish are of day. He must have turned a corner in the cave. He fumbled down for his electric torch and treading water turned it on. The beam was long and powerful but the air seemed to have a powdery physical quality which narrowed and contained the light. Pierce made out the roof of the cavern fairly high above him and the sides, running sheer into the water and festooned with brown seaweed like a display of glistening necklaces. The cave seemed to be about twenty yards wide. Keeping his torch trained on the roof Pierce swam a few strokes back and the distant line of the daylight suddenly materialized in the dark. ness on his left, like a long flake of some whitish substance laid out close to his head. It was as if he could have touched it. At the same time the moving spot of the torch above him seemed to plunge and vanish. Pierce trod in the water and got a better grip on the torch. He began to shine it all round him. The roof here was much higher and he realized that he was at a point where the cave divided. There were two caverns, seemingly of equal size, one leading away to the left, and the other, which he had just been following, to the right. This discovery slightly unnerved Pierce. His traditional mental picture of the cave showed a single roomy cavern penetrating upward into the cliff and culminating in a dry airy chamber possibly full of treasure. Not that treasure mattered or even dryness and air. The final chamber might simply be the last hole or cranny in which the rising tide finally kissed the roof and drowned its trapped rat in black oblivion. Only Pierce had not realized that he would have to make choices. The idea of a choice brought with it the idea of life, of future, and this brought a first wrench of fear. Pierce shone the torch up at the roof of the left hand cavern. It was some twenty-five feet above water level and covered in seaweed. He turned the light on to the right hand cavern. The roof was a trifle higher, also covered in seaweed. Which fork would lead him upward? He decided, as he had no other guide, to follow the chance which had led him to the right. He switched off the torch and swam on. The flake of daylight disappeared. He swam slowly now, trying to sense the position and close tress of the walls by a kind of radar. He felt that he was able to do it. But the darkness oppressed him. It had become even thicker and more physical, fitting over his head like a casing of black fungus. It seemed that if he lifted his hand he might be able to break off a piece. His breath suddenly became quick and short, and he had to tread water to make his breathing regular again. The water, which had seemed warmer inside the cave than out in the sea, still seemed unusually warm, and he felt no tiredness and no chill. He hauled up the torch again and shone it about, shining it back over the way he had come and then ahead. Just in front of him the cavern divided again. Another choice. The thought came to Pierce, suppose that I survive the sea but simply get lost in this awful labyrinth and never manage to find my way back? Would the tide running out show him the way? He was not sure. He swam slowly forward and pointed the thin line of light at the cavern ahead. The torchlight seemed narrow and ragged, devoured by the dark. He could see less than before. His eyes seemed to be becoming less and not more accustomed to the thick fungoid murk. Here the left-hand channel seemed slightly wider and its wet weedy roof higher above the sea. Pierce swam slowly into the opening. He thought first right, and then left. I must remember. First right and then left. He shone the torch ahead of him examining the roof and walls. The cavern showed no diminution in size, but equally no tendency to rise, and the cave walls still descended sheer into the water. There was not even a
