that night as they smoked a last
cigarette on their balcony. "She told me this afternoon that she'd
remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the
time that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems
she was listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay
her hands on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she
took a course last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next
spring, and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan."

Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick's, while
the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the
belfry of San Giorgio.

"Poor Coral! How dreary--" Susy murmured

"Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything
I know."

"Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me," she laughed, getting up
lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto
two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back
sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the
warmth of Nick's enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.

The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick's sojourn on the
Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again,
was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had
always admired Strefford's ruthless talent for using and discarding the
human material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would
not remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the
Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their
door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the
Hickses' admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking
inspired by the very characteristics that would once have provoked her
disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people
with big purses; in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations
was inexhaustible. But they had to be successful common people; and the
trouble was that the Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.
It was not only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many
of their rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful.
They had consistently resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers
who had first descried them on the h