They had planned an expedition to the coast, an all-day affair that was to include sea-bathing for the children, for the last day. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky, the air was clear and sweet with autumn scents, and the cavalcade set forth on the appointed morning in wild spirits. Mrs. Mackworth had provided lunch and tea, and the food, together with bathing things, cameras, and all the impedimenta of a holiday, were piled into the pony cart. Miss Mayne held the reins and Georgina walked at the pony's head; Jane and her brother ranged along the hedgerows like a couple of terriers; while Graeme brought up the rear, outwardly cheerful, but inwardly experiencing the varied sensations of a man who has decided to propose ere the going down of the sun to a damsel whose only concern appeared to be to avoid being left alone in his company. They reached the sea about noon; Graeme had chosen a little bay where the sands were safe for bathing. The coast stretched away on one hand in a waste of dunes and marsh, and on the other rose in indented cliffs from a rock-strewn beach. On the top of the cliffs they unpacked the baskets, turned the pony loose to graze, and, when the children had had their longed-for bathe, lunched al fresco as might the gods have eaten upon Olympus. It was after lunch that Graeme made his first anxious bid for the company of Miss Mayne alone. "Supposing you three go and explore the caves," he suggested to the children, a clumsy argument which, for its very ingenuousness, roused no suspicions in that maiden's heart. "But what about you and Miss Mayne?" inquired Jane. "Well," said Graeme feebly, "p'raps we'll go and look for seagulls' eggs along the cliffs." "Gulls don't lay eggs in September," said Miss Mayne. "Why shouldn't we all go and explore caves?" Nothing was further from her mind than the imminence of the proposal shaping itself on Graeme's lips, but a pretty loyalty to the children's parents forbade her to let them out of her vision. "A nice business," said her conscience, "if one of them got hurt. Where was Miss Mayne? Philandering somewhere out of sight with a Naval officer.... Well, not philandering exactly, but----" "I thought perhaps you might be tired," broke in the voice of the Naval officer upon her meditations. "Not in the least," she replied. "Come along, we'll all go down to the beach." So off they set and awakened the echoes of the shallow caves with their voices, explored the pools left by the tide; built with the aid of pieces of driftwood a sand castle that had cockle shells for windows and a tiny green crab as keeper of the gateway, and through all the absorption of this light nonsense Graeme was conscious of Claire Mayne, whether she spoke or was silent, in view or out of sight, as a man is aware of the sunlight and the wind on his cheek. She seemed inevitable--inevitable and indispensable. The children found him dullish and rather distrait.