"No, I didn't--first I've heard of it." "You never hear anything when you're reading a newspaper. I told you at breakfast this morning, and that she was going to wire the time of the train. And you were out, and I had to leave everything and go and meet her myself." "Sorry," John Willie grunted. He remembered now. "I mean, I didn't gather it was to-day." "Well, I hope you'll manage to spare her an hour or two now that she's here," Minetta said a little crossly. "I did tell her to come just whenever she wished, and she didn't know the Wakes were coming on." "All right," John Willie yawned. "I was going fishing, that's all; but I won't if you don't want. How long's she staying?" "At least a fortnight. So don't say I haven't told you that. And do try to be in just occasionally. Have you had supper?" "I didn't want any, thanks. Sorry I forgot, Min. Say good night to June for me." Five minutes later he had turned out the gas and tumbled into bed. Except that she postponed his escape from ennui for a day or two, June's arrival was a matter of indifference to him. He had known her for so long that he regarded her almost as if she had been a split-off portion of Minetta herself, that happened to possess its own apparatus of speech and locomotion. He could no more have said whether she was pretty than he could have said whether Minetta was pretty. It was no trouble to talk to June. As much talk as was necessary came of itself. He had only to say "You remember so-and-so----" or "Like that time when----" and conversation sustained itself out of a hundred trifles desultorily familiar to both of them. That, at any rate, was a comfort. With anybody new he would have had to take a certain amount of trouble. With June it didn't matter. So, at breakfast the next morning, he did not actually read the newspaper as he ate, but he threw out a remark from time to time as it were over the edge of an imaginary newspaper, and then asked June what she would like to do that morning. When she replied that she wanted him to do just whatever he had intended to do, he even hoisted himself to the level of a little ceremoniousness, and told her that he had no plans at all save to amuse her--what about a bathe, the morning Concert in the Pavilion, a drive in the afternoon, and so on? By keeping to this beaten track of enjoyment, he could, at one and the same time, be entertaining June and keeping an eye open for that gipsy girl who haunted his imagination. "A bathe?" said June.... "Oh, of course! How stupid of me! I'd forgotten there was mixed bathing here now. What a change!... Wasn't there a frightful row about it?"