She held out her hand to him. He took it and elegantly kissed it.
‘Au revoir, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘Nous nous reverrons au mois d’Août. Sans faute, n’est ce pas?’
She nodded.
He gave her one searching look, waved his hand and disappeared into the booking-office.
Mariella, following him, turned back for a moment to say in a small voice:
‘Good-bye, Judith. I’ll see you again, shan’t I?’
Her face was for once without its little smile. It was composed and—yes—quite grown up: yes, it had turned into one of those unnumbered women’s faces, masked with a faint fixed perplexity and sadness: and, behind the mask, not alive at all.
She turned to Martin who still lingered beside her.
‘Then—if my mother writes to you?—’ he said.