“Which way?”
The conversation was from beginning to end above the policeman’s head. But such a very hot buckra man must be humoured. At random the policeman pointed up the main street. The gardener was indeed a man of luck, for that was the right direction.
The main street on a fiery afternoon was as long as eternity, but in certain states of mind a man may bridge eternity in a breath, and not know what he has crossed.
He was on the race-course. He looked back and the launch was approaching the Caribbeania in the far-off bay, like a dwarf panting defiance at a giant.
When he was half-way across the race-course, he saw a white figure surmounted by a brown straw hat, in the Botanical Gardens, in the shade of a banyan tree.
The suffragette had lighted a cigarette in a laborious attempt to appear calm, but she pressed her hand to her breast as though she had been running. “I’m not coming,” she shouted, when he was within shouting distance.
He vaulted the railing of the race-course, and the railing of the garden. “What a bore!” he said. “Then I must stop too.”
“Why?” she asked.
Very far off, the launch was nestling at the side of the Caribbeania.
“For reasons I cannot be bothered to repeat to you.”