here?"

"No-o," Beryl drawled. She sounded vague. "I'm undressing farther along.
I'm going to bathe with Mrs. Harry Kember."

"Very well." But Mrs. Fairfield's lips set. She disapproved of Mrs Harry
Kember. Beryl knew it.

Poor old mother, she smiled, as she skimmed over the stones. Poor old
mother! Old! Oh, what joy, what bliss it was to be young....

"You look very pleased," said Mrs. Harry Kember. She sat hunched up on
the stones, her arms round her knees, smoking.

"It's such a lovely day," said Beryl, smiling down at her.

"Oh my dear!" Mrs. Harry Kember's voice sounded as though she knew
better than that. But then her voice always sounded as though she
knew something better about you than you did yourself. She was a long,
strange-looking woman with narrow hands and feet. Her face, too, was
long and narrow and exhausted-looking; even her fair curled fringe
looked burnt out and withered. She was the only woman at the Bay who
smoked, and she smoked incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her
lips while she talked, and only taking it out when the ash was so long
you could not understand why it did not fall. When she was not playing
bridge--she played bridge every day of her life--she spent her time
lying in the full glare of the sun. She could stand any amount of
it; she never had enough. All the same, it did not seem to warm her.
Parched, withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece
of tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very
fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though
she was one of them, and the fact that she didn't care twopence about
her house and called the servant Gladys "Glad-eyes," was disgraceful.
Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her indifferent,
tired voice, "I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a handkerchief if
I've got one, will you?" And Glad-eyes, a red bow in her hair instead of
a cap, and white shoes, came running with an impudent smile. It was an
absolute scandal! True, she had no children, and her husband... Here the
voices were always raised; they became fervent. How can he have married
her? How can he, how can he? It must have been money, of course, but
even then!

Mrs. Kember's husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and
so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect
illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair, dark
blue eyes, red lips, a