“Tell me about Linda,” murmured the girl.
Sorio threw a wild glance around them. “It’s her fear that taught her what she knew—what she guessed. Fear reads deep and far. Fear breaks through many barriers. But she’s changed now since she’s been with Brand. She’s become like the rest.”
“Oh, Brand—!” Philippa shrugged her shoulders. “So he’s come into it? Well, let them go. Tell me more about Nance. Does she cling to you and make a fuss? Does she try the game of tears?”
Sorio looked at her sharply. A vague suspicion invaded the depths of his heart. They walked along in silence for several minutes. The power of the sun seemed to increase. A mass of seaweed, floating below the water, caused in one place an amber-coloured shadow to break the monotony of the glittering surface.
“Does your son believe in you—as I do?” she asked gently.
As soon as the words had crossed her lips she knew they were the very last she ought to have uttered. The man withdrew into himself with a rigid tightening of every nerve. No one—certainly not Nance—had ever dared to touch this subject. Once to Nance, in London, and twice recently to his present companion, had he referred to Baptiste but this direct question about the boy was too much; it outraged something in him which was beyond articulation. The shock given him was so intense and the reaction upon his feelings so vivid that, hardly conscious of what he did, he thrust his hand into his pocket and clutched tightly with his fingers the book containing his work, as though to protect it from aggression. As he thus stood there before her, stiff and speechless, she could only console herself by the fact that he avoided her eyes.
Her mind moved rapidly. She must invent, at all costs, some relief to this tension. She had trusted her magnetism too far.
“Adriano,” she said, imitating with feminine instinct Baltazar’s caressing intonation, “I want to bathe. We’re out of sight of every one. We know each other well enough now. Shall we—together?”
He met her eyes now. There was a subtile appeal in their depths which drew him to her and troubled his senses. He nodded and uttered an embarrassed laugh. “Why not?” he answered.
“Very well,” she said quickly, clinching her suggestion before he had time to revoke his assent, “I’ll just run behind these sand hills and take off my things. You undress here and get into the water. And swim out, too, Adrian, with your back to me! I’ll soon join you.”