with a strange sort of longing
mysteriously combined with repulsion and dread. And underneath all her
feelings and thoughts there was a basic excitement which troubled her
and which she could not get rid of.

One morning she got up full of restlessness. That day Dick Garstin was
not painting. It was a Sunday, and he had gone into the country to stay
with some friends. Miss Van Tuyn had made no arrangement to see Arabian.
Indeed, she never saw him except on the painting days, for she still
kept up the pretence that he was merely an acquaintance, and that she
only met him because of her interest in Garstin's work and her wish to
learn more of the technique of painting. The day was free before her.
She went to the telephone and called up Alick Craven.

It was a fine morning, cold and crisp, with a pale sun. She longed to be
out of town, and she suggested to Craven to join her in hiring a Daimler
car, to run down to Rye, and to have a round of golf on the difficult
course by the sea. She had a friend close to Rye who would introduce
them as visiting players. They would take a hamper and lunch in the car
on the way down.

Craven agreed with apparent eagerness. By ten they were off. Soon after
one they were on the links. They played the full round, eighteen holes,
and Craven beat her. Then they had tea in the house below the club-house
on the left-hand side of the road as you go towards Camber Sands.

After tea Miss Van Tuyn suggested running a little farther on in the car
and taking a walk on the sands before starting on the journey back to
London.

"I love hard sands and the wind and the lines upon lines of surf!" she
said. "The wind blows away some of my civilization."

"I know!" said Craven, looking at her with admiration.

He liked her strength and energy, the indefatigable youth of her.

"_En route!_"

Soon the car stopped. They got out, and over the sandy hill, with its
rough sea-grasses, they made their way to the sands.

The tide was low. There was room and to spare on the hard, level
expanse. Lines of white surf stretched to right and left far as the eyes
could see. The piercing cries of the gulls floating on the eddying wind
were relieved against the blooming diapason of the sea. And the solitude
was as the solitude of some lost island of the main. They descended,
sinking in the loose, fine sand of the banks, and the soft, pale sand
that edged them, and made their way to the yellow and vast sands that
e