Though fog-banks and disaster might lie in ambush about the Race of Alderney, nothing could be tranquiller than the fair summer evening here, on the coast of France. After an excellent dinner, vraie cuisine Normande, served in the quaint, red-tiled salle of the Hôtel Chateaubriand, the collected yachting party were now progressing along the pleasant sweep of road that leads to Luc. Luc alone, among this group of villages, has a jetty, and off Luc the _Princess_ lay moored. Daylight’s last flicker was dying from the sky. Already deep fissures of shade intersected the white sand dunes bordering the shore. The sea lay motionless, a vague iridescence far away, northward, the only foreboding of coming change. Cassandra Tighe, a bold spot of colour in the gloaming, had exchanged her dredging net for some amphibious structure of green gauze and whalebone. She flitted hither and thither among the bushes that skirted the path, moth-hunting. The younger members of the expedition, in groups of two, loitered slowly along their way, for it was an hour when girlish faces look their fairest, when men’s voices are apt to soften, involuntarily! Dinah Arbuthnot, after a good deal of strategy, had contrived not merely to get possession of her husband, but to hold him, strongly guarded, and at safe distance from the rest. Linda Thorne herself (and Linda had, at will, a longer or a shorter sight than other people) could scarce do more than guess at the outlines of the two figures. The little lover-like fact that this sober couple, this Darby and Joan of four years’ standing, walked arm in arm, could be known only to themselves. ‘Yes, Gaston, I was amused at sea, for you were there. And I was amused differently by Miss Bartrand. I wish you had been with us at La Delivrande. It was the first time I ever went inside a Popish church,’ said Dinah, gravely. ‘And yet, Popish though it was, I could scarce help saying my prayers as we stood before the altar. The tears came in my eyes as I remembered--I mean as I looked at the heap of offerings, and thought of the sad hearts that had brought their troubles there.’ ‘Was the smell very detestable--a smell one could sketch? Had you beggars? Had the beggars wounds? Of course, votive churches and such things have to be done, in one’s youth. I am too old,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot; ‘my digestion is too touchy for me to run the risk of physical horrors of my own free will.’ ‘I thought an artist should seek out every kind of experience.’ Gaston had so often insisted upon the duty of pursuing inspiration among all sorts and conditions of men--still more of women--that the remark from Dinah’s lips had a savour of mischief.