Flame scorched her again. The pause each time she saw it now became longer, more deliberate, more inviting, more emptily unfilled. Her smile became more luring, his more rejecting. As she saw it now, in the cruel, distorting night, he had seen her permission and refused it. By day she had known that simple Barry had seen nothing; by day she would know it again. Between days are set nights of white, searing flame, two in a bed so that one cannot sleep. Damn Gerda, lying there so calm and cool. It had been a mistake to ask Gerda to come; if it hadn't been for Gerda they wouldn't have been two in a bed.
"Barry's a good deal taken up with her just now," said Nan to herself, putting it into plain, deliberate words, as was her habit with life's situations. "He does get taken up with pretty girls, I suppose, when he's thrown with them. All men do, if you come to that. For the moment he's thinking about her, not about me. That's a bore. It will bore me to death if it goes on.... I wonder how long it will go on? I wonder how soon he'll want to make love to me again?"
Having thus expressed the position in clear words, Nan turned her mind elsewhere. What do people think of when they are seeking sleep? It is worse than no use to think of what one is writing; that wakes one up, goads every brain-cell into unwholesome activity. No use thinking of people; they are too interesting. Nor of sheep going through gates; they tumble over one another and make one's head ache. Nor of the coming day; that is too difficult: nor of the day which is past; that is too near. Wood paths, quiet seas, running streams—these are better.
"Any lazy man can swim
Down the current of a stream."
Or the wind in trees, or owls crying, or waves beating on warm shores. The waves beat now; ran up whisperingly with the incoming tide, broke, and sidled back, dragging at the wet sand.... Nan, hearing them, drifted at last into sleep.
CHAPTER IX
THE PACE
1
The coast road to Land's End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path and you have to walk.