“You have sent the car away,” he reminded her cheerfully. “You would simply have to sit upon the balcony and reflect upon your wasted morning.”
“I decline to talk upon the putting green,” she said. “It puts me off. If you will stand perfectly quiet and say nothing, I will play the like.”
They moved off presently to the next teeing ground.
“I don’t believe this nonsense is good for our golf,” she said.
“It is immensely good for us as human beings,” he protested.
They had played the ninth hole and turned for home. On their right now was a shimmering stretch of wet sand and a thin line of sea, in the distance. The tide, receding, had left little islands of virgin sand, grass tufted, the home of countless sea-gulls. A brown-sailed fishing boat was racing for the narrow entrance to the tidal way.
“I am beginning to understand what there is about this coast which fascinated my father so,” he remarked.
“Are you?” she answered gravely. “Years ago I used to love it, but not now.”
He tried to change the subject, but the gloom had settled upon her face once more.
“You don’t know what it is like,” she went on, as they walked side by side after their balls, “to live day and night in fear, with no one to talk to—no one, that is to say, who is not under the same shadow. Even the voices of the wind and the sea, and the screaming of the birds, seem to bring always an evil message. There is nothing kindly or hopeful even in the sunshine. At night, when the tide comes thundering in as it does so often at this time of the year, one is afraid. There is so much to make one afraid!”