She looked straight before her, as if to rest her eyes from the passing immensities underfoot. There was indeed a fantastic sort of consonance between flight and the phenomenon of the shore that midday. I do not know, however, whether this vague association prompted the huge implication of her very next words--an implication which I now had from her for the first time. "You know what I mean," she said quietly. I tried to steal a glance at her face, but saw only the folds of the sunbonnet. "And that it isn't the kind of thing anybody wants to talk about," she added, leaving me to take the hint. "No," I agreed mechanically; but for all that I needed a few moments in which to think. Obviously I was not there to get out of Philip's wife something that Philip himself refused me; but the immensity of her quiet assumption had pulled me up short. I was assumed to know the whole--the whole--of "what she meant." It was left to my good sense to see that it was not a thing to talk about. There was to be no argument; she merely expected an equal simplicity in return, and with a woman like Mollie to expect such a thing is to get it. I watched a cloud of sheldrake that wheeled and broke over their own images a few yards away to our left, and then I turned to her. "My dear, I'm not sure that I do understand altogether, but we certainly won't talk about it. I should, however, like to mention one little thing that I don't think even Philip knows." She turned quickly. "What is that?" "Nor Smith." "What is it?" "Nor, I should say, you yourself." "If only you'll tell me what it is----!" I looked into her eyes. "Where is Mrs. Cunningham now?" I asked. VI Her start could hardly have been more sudden had I asked her where Alan was a few moments after he had been seen playing at the cliff's edge. "Audrey Cunningham? She was at Harrogate last, I think--or Scarboro--why?" "Why was her engagement broken off?" She made an abrupt, impatient gesture. Evidently I had plunged her back into an older mood. "Oh, I don't know! I'm tired to death of--of everything! Why do you want to remind me of it? I was just beginning to forget a little. Oh, why didn't we leave London a week earlier! We nearly did--Philip was only waiting for Billy to get those pictures back--we should have escaped everything then!" I soothed her. "Yes; but about the engagement. I could make very little of your letter. You said things were tangled and difficult and so on. What did you mean, Mollie?" She was silent. "Do you mean that you won't discuss Mrs. Cunningham with me?" Still she did not speak. "Because you have discussed her. I had your letter. You said you'd heard from her. That was since you last saw her. What happened in between?" She found her voice. "Nothing that I know, except that it seems to have been definitely off." "By that do you mean that she returned Monty's ring?" "She didn't say what she did with the ring."