Now she had only two days. She decided to tell Peter in London when they returned. Here she would part from him without a destroying word.
The last evening of the cruise was warm with a breeze from the land to the sea, enough for sailing. Peter and Lady Mary sat, after an early dinner, together on deck. Laughter came from the drawing-room below—a London drawing-room planted in a wilderness of marsh and water. Sunset was burning itself out. Light was flung upon miles of water, making of the country about them a glimmering palette. The mill on the horizon was derelict, standing black and crude, an eyeless giant, blind to the colour of earth and sky.
Merriment swelled below them. A clever musician parodied the latest phase of a modern French composer.
"This," said Peter with a sardonic gesture at the people below, "is a return to Nature."
"You are more scathing than you know," answered Lady Mary with a smile. "You are listening to a burlesque of the latest thing in music, written in the scale of the Opopo islanders. The Opopo islanders can only count up to five. We are determined to be primitive."
"I should like to sail away into all that," said Peter, waving his arm vaguely at the sunset.
Lady Mary caught at the idea.
"Can you sail?" she asked.
"Pretty fair," said Peter.
"Then why not?"