The night was paling to a grey-blue, and the dawn brought with it a chill wind. Eric found his body shivering and his fingers stiff. He looked lazily at the array of food, too tired to eat or drink; then he got into bed and once more turned out the light. Was Barbara asleep yet?... Apart from everything else, what a fool the girl was to run such risks! If Lady Pentyre had looked into her empty room, if one of the men had come to finish a cigar on the end of his bed!...
He rang for his tea at noon and looked curiously through his letters. There were ten loving words from Ivy, who disdained concealment from the servants, but he sought in vain for any note from Barbara. Perhaps he was foolish to expect one, for she knew that she could trust him to hold his tongue. The thorough-paced anarchist always expected the police to protect him from the violence of an enraged mob....
It was a shock, after he fancied that he had diagnosed her so exhaustively, to find an unsuspected depth of impudence. When Eric went into the garden before luncheon, he was astounded to find her reading under a tree. The others were working or playing golf; but she hailed him and explained that she had stayed behind with a head-ache. Her manner was free of challenge or appeal; she did not invite him to play the accomplice; there seemed nothing to hide, and in all the time that he had known her he had never understood her less than when she lay in white skirt and knitted silk coat, bare-headed and bare-armed, smoking cigarettes and turning the pages of a book which she was too indolent to cut. Her movements and expression were gently provocative, as though she were trying to tantalize him.
“I wonder—,” he began and stopped abruptly.
“Yes?”
Eric shrugged his shoulders and turned half away. He was wondering where and what Barbara would be in five, ten, twenty years’ time, wondering why he had ever been in love with her, why she still attracted him and why he could not bear to touch or look at her.
“I was wondering how far it was to the links. I thought I’d go and meet the others. They must have finished playing by now.”
“I think I shall stay here,” she answered lazily. “It’s cooler.”
Eric sauntered across the lawn and through the garden, stopping for a moment to speak with Lady Pentyre and Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos, who were cutting roses. He sauntered into a wood and sat down on a stile commanding the pathway to the links. There was a sprawling group by the eighteenth green, and he identified O’Rane, Pentyre and the general. They were joined by a foursome, and he gradually distinguished Amy Loring and Ivy, Gaymer and Mrs. O’Rane. The sprawling figures straightened themselves, O’Rane collected the clubs of the women, and the party ranged itself in single file and threaded its way along the foot-path towards the wood. Eric had been thinking so much of Barbara during the last twelve hours that he had not troubled about Gaymer, but, as they drew near, he looked closely at Ivy for signs of annoyance or distress. She was frowning a little, but it might have been a frown of fatigue, and her face cleared at sight of him.
“How did you all get on?,” he asked.