editates exclusively on his own affairs.

4

Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to
make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned
like Nan's.

Barry's hand gripped Nan's. He was here then, and it had come. Her head
swam; she felt light, like thistledown on the wind.

They came up from the station into quiet, gay, warm Penzance, and had tea
at a shop. They were going to stay at Marazion that night and the next,
and spend the day bicycling to Land's End and back. They were all four
full of vigour, brimming with life and energy that needed to be spent.
But Gerda looked pale.

"She's been overworking in a stuffy office," Barry said. "And not, except
when she dined with me, getting proper meals. What do you think she
weighs, Nan?"

"About as much as that infant there," Nan said, indicating a stout person
of five at the next table.

"Just about, I daresay. She's only six stone. What are we to do about
it?"

His eyes caressed Gerda, as they might have caressed a child. He would be
a delightful uncle by marriage, Nan thought.

They took the road to Marazion. The tide was going out. In front of them
the Mount rose in a shallowing violet sea.

"My word!" said Barry, and Kay, screwing up his eyes, murmured, "Good old
Mount." Gerda's lips parted in a deep breath; beauty always struck her
dumb.

Into the pale-washed, straggling old village they rode, stabled their
bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved
causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between
rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it,
Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking and
wheeling round them.

Nan stopped, the west in her eyes. "Look."

Point beyond point they saw stretching westward to Land's End, dim and
dark beyond a rose-flushed sea.

"Isn't it clear," said Nan. "You can see the cliff villages ever so far
along ... Newlyn, Mousehole, Clement's Island off it--and the point of
Lamorna."

Barry said "We'll go to Land's End by the coast road to-morrow, shan't
we, not the high road?"

"Oh, the coast road, yes. It's about twice the distance, with the ups and
downs, and you can't ride all the way. But we'll go by it."

For a moment they stood side by side, looking westward over the bay.

Nan said, "Aren't you glad you came?"

"I should say so!"

His answer came, quick