This was what happened in that second’s space:
Vividly there flashed before me a picture of my own Self just as I was then, in my black silk maillot with my wet black hair streaming down my neck; for I’d lost my scarf, it floated like a torn-off strand of orange-coloured seaweed on the waves. I saw it there.... And I saw that mind-picture of myself fling herself down on her knees beside him again—fling herself into his arms, cold from the sea-water and dripping and hard; saw her bury her face against his throat; heard, more clearly than in a dream, her gasping sob of, “Billy! You were drowning! I might have lost you!”
Then—flick! the picture vanished, and I was drawing my wrap about me composedly enough as I replied to him coldly, “I will help you up—on one condition. That you don’t speak to me.”
He said quietly, “You prefer that?”
“Only on that condition,” I repeated.
“Very well,” he rose slowly to his feet, trying them one after the other in the sand. “Only—I’m afraid I shall have to lean on you a bit—not hard.”
So, after I’d helped him on with his own wrap, I stood for him to put his arm about my shoulders. I don’t know if he leaned hard or no. Slowly and in silence, we walked up so from the shore to the cottages. Just before we got to the sandy path in front, his arm dropped, and he smothered an exclamation:
“Hul-lo!”
For, tilted up between the deep ruts made by Mr. Roberts’ cart in the sand in front of the cottage gardens, we caught sight of a motor-car; a gaudy, cherry-coloured affair, all ablaze with sunlit brass. The visitors. They’d come, then. I’d forgotten them. They were in my cottage at tea, I discovered, after he had turned quickly in at the little gate of the cottage he shares with Blanche; from behind the door of the kitchen sitting-room of our larger one I heard a babble of talk and much laughter. Must I face it? With this dreadful day behind me? Slowly I mounted the wooden stairs to my room and began to dress. I was, all of a sudden, deadly tired; why, I felt only half awake; what I would have liked would have been to fling myself down on that patchwork-quilted bed and sleep the time away until I was to leave Porth Cariad for ever.
That this must needs have happened this afternoon, to add to the conglomeration of things between him and me that I longed to forget! After the way he behaved this morning!