«No, just saying the obvious.»
«I think we must stay here awhile to learn happiness.»
«It's not my subject.»
«You mean about our marriage?»
«Yes. Then later on I'll do my exams, everything will be-«Suppose I were much older than-«
«Oh stop worrying, Bradley. You want to sort of justify everything.»
«I am by you eternally justified. Even if your love were to end now I am justified.»
«Is that a quotation?»
«Only from me.»
«Well, it isn't going to end now. And do stop boring me about your age.»
«For all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart, which in thy breast doth live as thine in me. How can I then be older than thou art?»
«Is that a quotation?»
«It's a damn rotten argument.»
«Bradley, have you noticed anything about me?»
«One or two little things, I suppose.»
«Have you noticed that in the last two or three days I've grown up?»
I had noticed that. «Yes.»
«I was a child and perhaps you are still thinking of me as a child. But now I am a woman, a real one.»
«Oh my darling girl, hold onto me, hold onto me, hold onto me, and if I ever try to leave you don't let me.»
We walked across a meadow to a little village and found our shop and as we began to walk back the mist cleared away completely. And now the dunes and our courtyard were huge and glistening with sun, all the stones, dampened a little by the mist, shining in their different colours. We left our basket beside the fence and ran on down towards the sea. Julian suggested that we should collect some wood for a fire, but this proved difficult because every bit of wood we found was far too beautiful to burn. However we did find a few pieces which she consented to immolate, and I was carrying them back through the sandy dunes to our collecting point, leaving her still on the beach, when I saw in the distance something which absolutely froze my blood. A man in uniform on a bicycle was just riding along the bumpy track away from our bungalow.
I called to Julian that I was going back to the house to get the car to carry the wood, and she should stay and go on collecting. I wanted to see if our bicyclist had left anything. I started off across the courtyard, but in a moment she was calling, «Wait for me!» and racing after me and clasping my hand and laughing. I averted my terrified face from her and she noticed nothing.
When we got to the house she stopped in the garden to inspect some stones which she had placed there in a row. I moved without obvious haste to the porch and went in through the door. A telegram was lying on the mat and I picked it up with a quick swoop. I went on into the lavatory and locked the door.
The telegram was addressed to me. I began to fumble at it with trembling fingers. I tore the whole thing, including the telegram itself, then stood there holding the two halves of the paper together. It read, Please telephone me immediately Francis.
