Having thus taken pact with himself he experienced a sense of relief and became almost cheerful. He had breakfast alone with Harry—both ladies customarily preferring to take that intimate meal in their own rooms—and talked with him quite normally about various matters, chiefly golf. He became almost garrulous in explaining his theories concerning the proper use of the niblick. Harry was going to play golf that morning with Madge. He looked extremely fresh and attractive in his suit of tweed knickers; James did not blame Madge in the least for falling in love with his brother rather than him. Nor was he in the least inclined to find fault with Harry for falling in love with Madge. Only ... but what was the use in going over all that again?
He walked briskly down to the town after breakfast and engaged a berth on the New York express for that night. Living in immediate propinquity to the happy lovers would of course be intolerable. Then he walked back to the house. It was rather a long walk; the house stood on a height at some distance back of the town. A feeling of lassitude overcame him before he reached home; the exertions of last night were beginning to tell on him. Oh, the horror of last night! The memory of it was almost more oppressive than the dreadful thing itself.
He supposed he ought to go up and begin to pack, but he did not feel like it. Instead he wandered out on the verandah to lie in the sun and watch the sea for a while. He came at last to a hexagonal tower-like extension of the verandah built over an abutment of rock falling sharply away on all sides except that toward the house. There was a drop of perhaps twenty-five feet from the broad railing of this extension to the ground below. Harry, who knew the house from his early days, had dubbed its peak-roofed excrescence the chamber up a tower to the east that Elaine guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot in; it was sometimes more briefly referred to as Elaine. It was a pleasant place to sit, but very windy on a day like this, and James was rather surprised to discover Beatrice sitting in one angle of the railing gazing silently out over the sea.
"Hullo," he said, listlessly sinking into a chair. "You've heard, I suppose?"
"Yes, I've heard."
"Fine, isn't it?"
"Oh, splendid."
"I'm going to New York to-night," said James after a moment.
"I'm going home next month," said Beatrice.