He yawned, stretched his arms above his head, and left his room. Then he remembered that he had left a book in the room with the minstrels gallery that morning. He went upstairs to fetch it. The room itself lay in shadow, but outside, beyond the uncurtained windows, the light was so fierce that it hurt his eyes.
He had never seen anything to approach the colour. Sea and sky were a burning blue, and they were seen through a golden mist that seemed to move like some fluttering, mysterious curtain between earth and heaven. There was perfect stillness. Three little fishing-boats with brown sails, through which the sun glowed with the red light of a ruby, stood out against the staring, dazzling white of the distant cliffs.
He found his book, and stood there for a moment wondering why he liked the place so much. He had never been a man of any imagination, but now, vaguely, he filled the space around him with figures. He could not analyse his thoughts at all, but he knew that it all meant something to him now, something that had not been there a week ago.
He went down to tea.
The drawing-room was lying in shadow; the light and heat were shut out by heavy curtains. His wife was making tea, and as he came in at the door he realised her daintiness and charm very vividly. The shining silver and delicate china suited her, and there were little touches of very light blue about her white dress that were vague enough to seem accidental; you wondered why they had happened to be so exactly in precisely the right places. There were also there Lady and Sir Richard Gale, Alice Du Cane, Mrs. Lawrence, and in the background with a diminutive kitten, Tony.
“Something to eat, Miss Du Cane? What, nothing, really?” He sat down beside her and Tony. She interested him, partly because she was so beautiful and partly because she was perhaps going to marry Tony. She looked very cool now; a little too cool, he thought.
“Well? Do you like this place?” he said.
“I? Oh yes! It’s lovely, of course. But I think it would be better if one had a cottage here, quite quietly. Of course the hotel’s beautiful and most awfully comfortable, but it’s the kind of place where one oughtn’t to have to think of more than the place; it’s worth it. All the other things—dressing and thinking what you look like, and table d’hôte—they all come in between somehow like a wall. One doesn’t want anything but the place.”
That, he suddenly discovered, was why he liked the little room upstairs, because it was, so simply and clearly, the place. He looked at her gratefully.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s just what I’ve been feeling. I missed it last year somehow. It didn’t seem fine in quite the same way.”