"Why?" I asked, startled.
"You saved me from doing the same thing, you did it first."
We went into the White Woman's Cave while the maids laid the lunch on the smooth, springy grass. More guests had been invited than I expected, but Cheneston had not yet turned up.
The walls of the White Woman's Cave are smooth and dark, and the sea purrs through it and licks the smoothness with a little kiss, and the light comes through the roof and lights the water so that it gleams like pale green fire.
It was wonderful and a little uncanny, like a theatrical scene, and it was cold in there, and the daylight and the sunshine seemed far away.
"And to think a woman lived here for years," one of the girls said.
"Her lover died and she wanted to get away from the world."
"How romantic!" said another girl. "Look, here's Major Morrison and Captain Cromer."
I think she thought that much more romantic. As she spoke Grace Gilpin moved. I don't know whether she did it purposely; perhaps the instinct to frame her beauty is implanted in her. She stood so that the green light from the water, fairylike and phosphorescent, held her in a shimmering glow of opalescent fire. She had taken off her hat; her coronet of fluffy, tendrilly gold hair shone like a halo, and her dress gleamed like a mermaid's sheath; she seemed neither of heaven nor earth, a betwixt and between creature made for man's undoing.
"I wish I were an artist, Grace!" Cheneston said.