e best place you could
have brought us to."

After dinner they sat on the beach and leaned against a fishing-boat. It
was full moon. The northern cliff cast its huge shadow out to sea and half
way across the beach. A knot of fisher folk sat full in the moonlight on
the jetty and sang a song with a mournful refrain. Behind them in the
square of yellow light of the salon window could be seen the figures of the
two English maiden ladies apparently still addressing picture post-cards.
The luminous picture stood out sharp against the dark mass of the hotel.
Beyond the shadow of the cliff the sea lay like a silver mirror in the
windless air. A tiny border of surf broke on the pebbles. Emmy drew a long
breath and asked Septimus if he smelled the seaweed. The dog came and
sniffed at their boots; then from the excellent leather judging them to be
persons above his social station, he turned humbly away. Septimus called
him, made friends with him--he was a smooth yellow dog of no account--and
eventually he curled himself up between them and went to sleep. Septimus
smoked his pipe. Emmy played with the ear of the dog and looked out to sea.
It was very peaceful. After a while she sighed.

"I suppose this must be our last evening together."

"I suppose it must," said Septimus.

"Are you quite sure you can afford all the money you're leaving with me?"

"Of course. It comes out of the bank."

"I know that, you stupid," she laughed. "Where else could it come from
unless you kept it in a stocking? But the bank isn't an unlimited gold-mine
from which you can draw out as many handfuls as you want."

Septimus knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"People don't get sovereigns out of gold-mines. I wish they did. They
extract a bit of gold about the size of this pebble out of a ton of quartz.
I once bought shares in a gold-mine and there wasn't any gold in it at all.
I always used to be buying things like that. People sold them to me. I was
like Moses."

"Moses?"

"Oh, not _that_ Moses. He could get anything out of anything. He got water
out of a rock. I mean the son of the Vicar of Wakefield, who bought the
green spectacles."

"Oh," said Emmy, who after the way of her generation had never heard of
him.

"I don't do it--let people sell me things--any more, now," he said gravely.
"I seem to have got wise. Perhaps it has come through having had to look
after you. I see things much clearer."

He filled and lit another pipe and began