There was a footfall in the room behind them and Mrs. Cornell turned to see who was coming. “Oh, Flora,” she said. “Come out and take a look at the sunset. It’s something grand.” The woman stepped out and stood beside them. She had changed her costume and her narrow blue linen dress outlined her too slender figure. Shine thought she would have been pretty if she had not looked so worn and thin. He noticed the brightness of her dark eyes, brilliant and quick-moving as a bird’s. There was red on her cheek-bones, a flushed patch that was not rouge. Mrs. Cornell’s expression recurred to him, “burning up”--the meager body, the hot high color, the dry lips resolutely smiling, suggested inner fires. “Yes,” she answered, “it’s a wonderful evening.” “Take a cig.” Mrs. Cornell offered the box. “Sit down, there’s plenty of room.” Shine moved up. “No, I can’t sit down. There’s something about the air that makes you restless--too stimulating maybe.” She raised her voice and called to her husband, “Aleck, aren’t you coming in to change your clothes?” Without moving the man called back: “Not yet. There’s no hurry.” She turned to Shine with a little condoning air of wifely tolerance: “Mr. Stokes has been shut up so long in town he can’t get enough of the fresh air.” “He’s enjoying the scenery, too,” Shine answered, and saw her eyes travel to the two figures on the rock. “Oh, that of course--that’s the best part of it.” Then in a tone of bright discovery: “Why look where Anne and Sybil are! Have they been there long?” “Ever since I’ve been here.” Mrs. Cornell’s voice was more than soothing, bluffly reassuring as the voice of one who tells a child there is no ghost. “And ever since Mr. Shine got through the pictures! Wallowing in the beauties of nature like the rest of us.” “Won’t you wallow, too?” Shine indicated the long unoccupied space on the step. She shook her head: “I like moving about. Something in this place gets on my nerves, it’s like being in a jail.” On a deep breath she shot out, “I hate it,” and stepped back into the room. “Going?” Mrs. Cornell veered round to follow her retreating figure. “Yes. I enjoy the scenery better when it hasn’t got people in it.” They looked at each other; a still minute of eye communication. “She’s all worked up,” he murmured. Her answer was to point to the two girls and then to Stokes: “Now she’ll keep her eye on them from somewhere else--probably the side piazza. That’s the way you are when you’re jealous--the sight of it kills you and you can’t stop watching.” “Lord!” whispered Shine into whose life no such gnawing passions had entered. And he thought of the girl in the page’s dress who was afraid to sit alone, and the man on the wharf brooding within sight of her, and the woman who was hovering round them like a helpless distracted bird. III