“No ill-treatment at home to warrant your running away?”
“Oh, no.”
“Not even an unhappy love affair?”
She shook her head slightly as though embarrassed.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty in April.”
Annan was silent. He had not supposed her to be over seventeen. She had seemed little more than a child in the starlight when she sat up ruffling her bobbed hair in the first tepid breeze.
She said seriously: “I am growing old. And if I have talent I have no time to waste. That is why I went away at the first opportunity.”
“What are your talents?”
“I dance. I have acted in school plays. Once I wrote a one-act piece for myself. They liked it.”