"Wouldn't it be better if you were to take a walk after your bathe?"
"What about you? Sure it wouldn't be too much for you?"
"I should like a walk."
"Come along then. I suppose I did stay in as long as was good for me."
A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the chinks of which hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At the top of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this there branches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and in ten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms and coppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and the sea might have been a hundred miles away.
"Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path under a convolvulus-starred hedge.
"Quite all right, thanks."
"Oh, smell the air! This is a jolly place! Which way is St Briac from here?"
"Over that way."
The dark eyes sent a message. "Well, now tell me what his painting's like. I expect it's as wonderful as his writing was."