'You're a nice creature,' he said. 'But you don't know much about the animals prowling about outside your little enclosure. Quite a lot of things may happen in the near future.'
'What sort of things?' said Mary sharply.
He laughed. 'Wait and see.'
VIII
When Audrey had dressed she went along the beach and out along a jutting point of rocks, joining Thomas Royde, who was sitting there smoking a pipe, exactly opposite to Gull's Point, which stood white and serene on the opposite side of the river.
Thomas turned his head at Audrey's approach, but he did not move. She sat down beside him without speaking. They were silent with the comfortable silence of two people who know each other very well indeed.
'How near it looks!' said Audrey at last breaking the silence.
Thomas looked across at Gull's Point. 'Yes, we could swim home.'
'Not at this tide. There was a housemaid Camilla had once. She was an enthusiastic bather, used to swim across and back whenever the tide was right. It has to be high or low — but when it's running out it sweeps you right down to the mouth of the river. It did that to her one day — only luckily she kept her head and came ashore all right on Easter Point — only very exhausted.'
'It doesn't say anything about its being dangerous here.'
'It isn't this side. The current is the other side. It's deep there under the cliffs. There was a would-be suicide last year — threw himself off Stark Head — but he was caught by a tree half-way down the cliff and the coastguards got to him all right.'
'Poor devil,' said Thomas. 'I bet he didn't thank them. Must be sickening to have made up your mind to get out of it all and then be saved. Makes a fellow feel a fool.'
'Perhaps he's glad now,' suggested Audrey dreamily.
She wondered vaguely where the man was now and what he was doing.
Thomas puffed away at his pipe. By turning his head very slightly he could look at Audrey. He noted her grave, absorbed face as she stared across the water. The long brown lashes that rested on the pure line of the cheek, the small shell-like ear.
That reminded him of something.
'Oh, by the way, I've got your ear-ring — the one you lost last night.' His fingers delved into his pocket.
Audrey stretched out a hand. 'Oh, good, where did you find it? On the terrace?'
'No. It was near the stairs. You must have lost it as you came down to dinner. I noticed you hadn't got it at dinner.'
'I'm glad to have it back.'
She took it. Thomas reflected that it was rather a large barbaric ear-ring for so small an ear. The ones she had on to-day were large, too.
He remarked: 'You wear your ear-rings even when you bathe. Aren't you afraid of losing them?'
'Oh, these are very cheap things. I hate being without ear-rings because of this.' She touched her left ear. Thomas remembered. 'Oh, yes, that time old Bouncer bit you?' Audrey nodded.
They were silent, reliving a childish memory. Audrey Standish (as she then was), a long, spindle-legged child, putting her face down on old Bouncer, who had had a sore paw. A nasty bite he had given her. She had had to have a stitch put in it. Not that there was much to show now — just the tiniest little scar.
'My dear girl,' he said, 'you can hardly see the mark. Why do you mind?'
Audrey paused before answering with evident sincerity: 'It's because — because I just can't bear a blemish.'
Thomas nodded. It fitted in with his knowledge of Audrey — of her instinct for perfection. She was in herself so perfectly finished an article.
He said suddenly: 'You're far more beautiful than Kay.'
She turned quickly.
'Oh, no, Thomas. Kay — Kay is really lovely.'
'On the outside. Not underneath.'
'Are you referring,' said Audrey with faint amusement, 'to my beautiful soul?'
Thomas knocked out the ashes of his pipe.
'No,' he said. 'I think I mean your bones.'
Audrey laughed.
Thomas packed a new pipeful of tobacco. They were silent for quite five minutes, but Thomas glanced at Audrey more than once, though he did it so unobtrusively that she was unaware of it.
He said at last, quietly: 'What's wrong, Audrey?'
'Wrong? What do you mean by wrong?'
'Wrong with you. There's something.'
'No, there's nothing. Nothing at all.'
'But there is.'
She shook her head.
'Won't you tell me?'
'There's nothing to tell.'
'I suppose I'm being a chump — but I've got to say it — ' He paused. 'Audrey — can't you forget about it? Can't you let it all go?'
She dug her small hands convulsively into the rock. 'You don't understand — you can't begin to understand.'
'But, Audrey, my dear, I do. That's just it. I know.' She turned a small, doubtful face to him.
'I know exactly what you've been through. And — and what it must have meant to you.'
She was very white now, white to the lips.
'I see,' she said. 'I didn't think — anyone knew.'
'Well, I do. I — I'm not going to talk about it. But what I want to impress upon you is that it's all over — it's past and done with.'
She said in a low voice: 'Some things don't pass.'
'Look here, Audrey, it's no good brooding and remembering. Granted you've been through Hell. It does no good to go over and over a thing in your mind. Look forward — not back. You're quite young. You've got your life to live and most of that life is in front of you. Think of to-morrow, not of yesterday.'
She looked at him with a steady, wide-eyed gaze that was singularly unrevealing of her real thoughts.
'And supposing,' she said, 'that I can't do that?'
'But you must.'
Audrey said gently: 'I thought you didn't understand. I'm — I'm not quite normal about — some things, I suppose.'
He broke in roughly: 'Rubbish. You — ' He stopped.
'I — what?'
'I was thinking of you as you were when you were a girl — before you married Nevile. Why did you marry Nevile?'
Audrey smiled. 'Because I fell in love with him.'
'Yes, yes, I know that. But why did you fall in love with him? What attracted you to him so much?'
She crinkled her eyes as though trying to see through the eyes of a girl now dead.
'I think,' she said, 'it was because he was so 'positive.' He was so much the opposite of what I was myself. I always felt shadowy — not quite real. Nevile was very real. And so happy and sure of himself and so — everything that I was not.' She added with a smile: 'And very good-looking.'
Thomas Royde said bitterly: 'Yes, the ideal Englishman — good at sport, modest, good-looking, always the little pukka sahib — getting everything he wanted all along the line.'
