“I’ve always been fond of you,” said Olive, “but I never realized what a brave man you were! You _work_ in this furnace? Fan me!” The cottage stood on a slope of presentable lawn that ended in a pebbly shore. The motor rushed through a fir plantation, reached the Georgian portico and Olive gladly smelled salt wind rising from the water fading in sunset. “There she is,” said Mark and whistled to a shape, black and tan against the sound, poised at the lip of a whitewashed pier. Margot came running and some men in bathsuits stared, deserted. The girl raced in a shimmer that reddened her legs to copper. Olive wondered if anything so alive, so gay existed elsewhere on this barbarous shore crushed by summer. Mark saw them happy, wiped his silly eyes and went down to chat in guarded grammar with the three young men from across the shallow bay. Inevitable that youngsters should come swimming and these were likeable fellows. Gurdy vouched for them. They slid soon like piebald seals into the water and swam off in a flurry of spray and bronze arms. Delicate wakes of fine bubbling spread on the surface. The wet heads grew small in this wide space of beryl. Again he watched irreproducible beauty.... It was right that the best makers of scenes wouldn’t paint the sea on back-drops. Let the people fancy it there below the vacancy of some open window. He must have the Cuban seas suggested thus in ‘Captain Salvador.’ He wished that Margot didn’t dislike the tragedy. Perhaps its stiff denial of lasting love afflicted her. It afflicted Mark. And yet the poet was right. The passion in the play would be a fleet, hot thing, engrossing for a week, a month and then stale for ever. Lust went so. He nodded and picked up Margot’s black and yellow bath wrap, a foolish, lovely cape in which she looked like an Arab. Then she called to him and he walked back to where she sat on the tiled steps reading a letter. “Olive brought me a note from Doris Arbuthnot. Lives in Devonshire. She’s a dear ... rather like aunt Sadie but not quite so hefty. All the Wacks have come home from France, now, and they won’t work. They sit about and talk to the heroes about France. Doris owns gobs of land and she’s having a poky time.--What are you laughing at?” “Your hair, sister.” She passed her hands over the sponge of black down and shrugged, “Sorry I had it bobbed. All the typists do, over here. Olive’s frightfully done up. Gone to bathe.” “Glad to have her, ain’t you?” “Ra--ther!--Oh, Cosmo Rand called up.” “What the--deuce did he want?” “Ronny Dufford gave him a heap of notes about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ I told him he’d best leave them at your office.--Shall you start rehearsing ‘Todgers’ as soon as the strike’s over?”