and emphatic. There was a pause after it. Nan
suddenly turned on him the edge of a smile.

Barry did not see it. He was not looking at her, nor over the bay, but
in front of him, to where Gerda, a thin little upright form, moved
bare-legged along the shining causeway to the moat.

Nan's smile flickered out. The sunset tides of rose flamed swiftly over
her cheeks, her neck, her body, and receded as sharply, as if someone had
hit her in the face. Her pause, her smile, had been equivalent, as she
saw them, to a permission, even to an invitation. He had turned away
unnoticing, a queer, absent tenderness in his eyes, as they followed
Gerda ... Gerda ... walking light-footed up the wet causeway.... Well, if
he had got out of the habit of wanting to make love to her, she would not
offer him chances again. When he got the habit back, he must make his own
chances as best he could.

"Come on," said Nan. "We must hurry."

She left no more pauses, but talked all the time, about Newlyn, about the
artists, about the horrid children, the fishing, the gulls, the weather.

"And how's the book?" he asked.

"Nearly done. I'm waiting for the end to make itself."

He smiled and looking round at him she saw that he was not smiling at
her or her book, but at Gerda, who had stepped off the causeway and was
wading in a rock pool.

He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her, apparently, all the
time he was talking about other things. It was irritating for an aunt to
bear.

They joined Kay and Gerda on the island. Kay was prowling about, looking
for a way by which to enter the forbidden castle. Kay always trespassed
when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when he was caught at it
that he disarmed comment. But this time he could not manage to evade the
polite but firm eye of the fisherman on guard. They crossed over to
Marazion again all together and went to the cafe for supper.

5

It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper
room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows. Nan
and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda sparse of
word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue eyes opened wide against sleep,
for she had not slept until late last night.

"High time she had a holiday," Barry said of her. "Four weeks' grind in
August--it's beginning to tell now."

Fussy Barry was about the child. As bad as Frances Carr with Pamela.
Gerda was as strong as a