Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs. Cartwright was standing just outside the salle windows beside the dark spiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in the puzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as the flowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a few riding lights showed in the Baissin, Jack Awdas strode up beside her.
"Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's not cold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk."
Now it is almost easier to take the roof off an hotel and to look down unchecked into its various rooms than it is to unveil and take stock of the contents of a woman's mind with its strata upon strata of confusing elements.
So, for what Mrs. Cartwright was feeling, we will take her word as she told herself that she felt relieved and settled about the affaire Jack Awdas.
She was glad it was all over. The boy had imagined himself in love with her.
A great mercy that he had not, after the manner of some men, allowed himself to dangle and sigh and create an atmosphere in which one did not quite know where one was. He had voiced his absurd and youthful passion at once. He had actually proposed to her—to her who might be his mother. So much the better, as it happened; because now she had been able to say "No" definitely. It had all been definitely settled and tidied up in that wood on the way from the oyster park.
Now, it was finished.
Now, it was quite safe again.
It would be silly to avoid the boy since both of them knew where they were.