"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole."
Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before. Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained....
It was of rough sky-blue crêpy stuff with touches of creamy edging and of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ... trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly. Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder woman's clothes generally did suit her.
Today—not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It puzzled little Olwen entirely....
As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost audacious things, that passed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh, not Olwen.
The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and passion flowers. There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells; "tonkle—tankle—tonkle—" and from the shore the distant roar of breakers.
Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright broke out, apparently à propos of nothing.
"Ah, well!
"'Better an omelette aux fines herbes where Love is, than the Carlton and a chaperon therewith.'
Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those books of mine that I—that we never write. Plenty of other things in Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never had——"