Neither of them enjoyed that expedition. It was the first of all the things they had done together that had failed. Jane wondered why. If they were not enjoying themselves on a day like that, when, she argued, would they enjoy themselves? The day remained as perfect as it had begun. There was nothing wrong, Robert admitted, with the day. They sailed in the sun's path and landed in a divine and solitary cove. Robert was obliged to agree that there was nothing wrong with the cove, and nothing, no nothing in the least wrong with the lunch. There might, yes, of course there might, be something very wrong with him. Whatever it was, it disappeared as they sighted Southbourne. Robert, mounting with uneasy haste the steps that led from the beach to the hotel garden, was unusually gay. They were late for dinner, and the table next theirs was empty. Outside, on the great green lawn in front of the windows, he could see Mrs. Tailleur walking up and down, alone. He dined with the abstraction of a man pursued by the hour of an appointment. He established Jane in the lounge, with all the magazines he could lay his hands on, and went out by the veranda on to the lawn where Mrs. Tailleur was still walking up and down. The Colonel and his wife were in the veranda. They made a low sound of pity as they saw him go. Mrs. Tailleur seemed more than ever alone. The green space was bare around her as if cleared by the sweep of her gown. She moved quietly, with a long and even undulation, a yielding of her whole body to the rhythm of her feet. She had reached the far end of the lawn as Lucy neared her, and he looked for her to turn and face him. She did not turn. The lawn at this end was bounded by a gravel walk. The walk was fenced by a low stone wall built on the edge of the Cliff. Mrs. Tailleur paused there and seated herself sideways on the wall. Her face was turned from Lucy, and he judged her unaware of his approach. In his eyes she gained a new enchantment from the vast and simple spaces of her background, a sea of dull purple, a sky of violet, divinely clear. Her face had the intense, unsubstantial pallor, the magic and stillness of flowers that stand in the blue dusk before night. She turned at the sound of the man's footsteps on the gravel. She smiled quietly, as if she knew of his coming, and was waiting for it there. He greeted her. A few words of no moment passed between them, and there was a silence. He stood by the low wall with his face set seaward, as if all his sight were fixed on the trail of smoke that marked the far-off passage of a steamer. Mrs. Tailleur's face was fixed on his. He was aware of it. Standing beside her, he was aware, too, of something about her alien to sea and sky; something secret, impenetrable, that held her, as it were, apart, shut in by her own strange and solitary charm.