'Not quite. A lizard suggests something quite tame. I don't think he is tame.'
'No,' said Audrey thoughtfully 'I don't think so, either.'
'How well they look together!' said Mary, watching the retreating pair. 'They match somehow, don't they?'
'I suppose they do.'
'They like the same things,' went on Mary. 'And have the same opinions and — and use the same language. What a thousand pities it is that — ' She stopped.
Audrey said sharply: 'That what?'
Mary said slowly: 'I suppose I was going to say what a pity it was that Nevile and she ever met.'
Audrey sat up stiffly. What Mary called to herself 'Audrey's frozen look' had come over her face. Mary said quickly: 'I'm sorry, Audrey. I shouldn't have said that.'
'I'd so much rather — not talk about it if you don't mind.'
'Of course, of course. It was very stupid of me. I — I hoped you'd got over it, I suppose.'
Audrey turned her head slowly. With a calm, expressionless face she said: 'I assure you there is nothing to get over. I — I have no feeling of any kind in the matter. I hope — I hope with all my heart that Kay and Nevile will always be very happy together.'
'Well, that's very nice of you, Audrey.'
'It isn't nice. It is — just true. But I do think it is — well — unprofitable to keep on going back over the past. 'It's a pity this happened — that!' It is all over now. Why rake it up? We've got to go on living our lives in the present.'
'I suppose,' said Mary simply, 'that people like Kay and Ted are exciting to me because — well, they are so different from anything or anyone that I have ever come across.'
'Yes, I suppose they are.'
'Even you,' said Mary with sudden bitterness, 'have lived and had experiences that I shall probably never have. I know you've been unhappy — very unhappy — but I can't help feeling that even that is better than — well — nothing. Emptiness!'
She said the last word with a fierce emphasis.
Audrey's wide eyes looked a little startled. 'I never dreamt you ever felt like that.'
'Didn't you?' Mary Aldin laughed apologetically. 'Oh, just a momentary fit of discontent, my dear. I didn't really mean it.'
'It can't be very gay for you,' said Audrey slowly. 'Just living here with Camilla — dear thing though she is. Reading to her, managing the servants, never going away.'
'I'm well fed and housed,' said Mary. 'Thousands of women aren't even that. And really, Audrey, I am quite contented. I have' — a smile played for a moment round her lips — 'my private distractions.'
'Secret vices?' asked Audrey, smiling also.
'Oh, I plan things,' said Mary vaguely. 'In my mind, you know. And I like experimenting, sometimes — upon people. Just seeing, you know, if I can make them react to what I say in the way I mean.'
'You sound almost sadistic, Mary. How little I really know you!'
'Oh, it's all quite harmless. Just a childish little amusement.'
Audrey asked curiously: 'Have you experimented on me?'
'No. You're the only person I have always found quite incalculable. I never know, you see, what you are thinking.'
'Perhaps,' said Audrey gravely, 'that is just as well.'
She shivered and Mary exclaimed: 'You're cold.'
'Yes. I think I will go and dress. After all, it is September.'
Mary Aldin remained alone, staring at the reflection on the water. The tide was going out. She stretched herself out on the sand, closing her eyes.
They had had a good lunch at the hotel. It was still quite full, although it was past the height of the season. A queer mixed-looking lot of people. Oh, well, it had been a day out. Something to break the monotony of day following day. It had been a relief, too, to get away from that sense of tension, that strung-up atmosphere that there had been lately at Gull's Point. It hadn't been Audrey's fault, but Nevile —
Her thoughts broke up abruptly as Ted Latimer plumped himself down on the beach beside her.
'What have you done with Kay?' Mary asked.
Ted replied briefly: 'She's been claimed by her legal owner.'
Something in his tone made Mary Aldin sit up. She glanced across the stretch of shining golden sands to where Nevile and Kay were walking by the water's edge. Then she glanced quickly at the man beside her.
She had thought of him as nerveless, as queer, as dangerous, even. Now for the first time she got a glimpse of someone young and hurt. She thought: 'He was in love with Kay — really in love with her — and then Nevile came and took her away….'
She said gently: 'I hope you are enjoying yourself down here.'
They were conventional words. Mary Aldin seldom used any words but conventional ones — that was her language. But her tone was an offer — for the first time — of friendliness, Ted Latimer responded to it.
'As much, probably, as I should enjoy myself anywhere.'
Mary said: 'I'm sorry.'
'But you don't care a damn, really! I'm an outsider — and what does it matter what outsiders feel and think?'
She turned her head to look at this bitter and handsome young man.
He returned her look with one of defiance.
She said slowly, as one who makes a discovery: 'I see. You don't like us.'
He laughed shortly. 'Did you expect me to?'
She said thoughtfully: 'I suppose, you know, that I did expect just that. One takes, of course, too much for granted. One should be more humble. Yes, it would not have occurred to me that you would not like us. We have tried to make you welcome — as Kay's friend!'
'Yes— as Kay's friend!'
The interruption came with a quick venom.
Mary said with disarming sincerity: 'I wish you would tell me — really I wish it — just why you dislike us? What have we done? What is wrong with us?'
Ted Latimer said, with a blistering emphasis on the one word: 'Smug!'
'Smug?' Mary queried it without rancour, examining the charge with judicial appraisement.
'Yes,' she admitted. 'I see that we could seem like that.'
'You are like that. You take all the good things of life for granted. You're happy and superior in your little roped-off enclosure shut off from the common herd. You look at people like me as though I were one of the animals outside!'
'I'm sorry,' said Mary.
'It's true, isn't it?'
'No, not quite. We are stupid, perhaps, and unimaginative — but not malicious. I myself am conventional and superficially, I dare say, what you call smug. But really, you know, I'm quite human inside. I'm very sorry, this minute, because you are unhappy, and I wish I could do something about it.'
'Well — if that's so — it's nice of you.'
There was a pause, then Mary said gently: 'Have you always been in love with Kay?'
'Pretty well.'
'And she?'
'I thought so — until Strange came along.'
Mary said gently: 'And you're still in love with her?'
'I should think that was obvious.'
After a moment or two, Mary said quietly: 'Hadn't you better go away from here?'
'Why should I?'
'Because you are only letting yourself in for more unhappiness.'
He looked at her and laughed.
