The dinghy, at Audrey's request, was brought round to the side of the yacht opposite from the Hard, and, screening her face as well as she could with an open parasol, she tripped down by the steps into it. If only Aguilar was away from the premises she might be saved, for the place would be shut up, and there would be nothing to do but return. Should Madame Piriac suggest going into the village to inquire--well, Audrey would positively refuse to go into the village. Yes, she would refuse! As the boat moved away from the yacht, Musa showed himself on deck. Madame Piriac signalled to him a salutation of the finest good humour. She had forgotten his pettishness. By absolutely ignoring it she had made it as though it had never existed. This was her art. Audrey, observing the gesture, and Musa's smiling reply to it, acquired wisdom. She saw that she must treat Musa as Madame Piriac treated him. She had undertaken the enterprise of launching him on a tremendous artistic career, and she must carry it through. She wanted to make a neat, clean job of the launching, and she would do it dispassionately, like a good workwoman. He had admitted--nay, he had insisted--that she was necessary to him. Her pride in that fact had a somewhat superior air. He might be the most marvellous of violinists, but he was also a child, helpless without her moral support. She would act accordingly. It was absurd to be angry with a child, no matter what his vagaries.... At this juncture of her reflections she noticed that Mr. Gilman and Miss Thompkins had quitted the yacht together and were walking seawards. They seemed very intimate, impregnated with mutual understanding. And Audrey was sorry that Mr. Gilman was quite so simple, quite so straightforward and honest. When the dinghy arrived at the sea-wall Audrey won the stalled admiration of the sailor in charge of the boat by pointing at once to the best--if not the only--place fit for a landing. The sailor was by no means accustomed to such _flair_ in a yacht's guests. Indeed, it had often astonished him that people who, as a class, had so little notion of how to get into or out of a dinghy could have succeeded, as they all apparently had, in any department of life. With continuing skill, Audrey guided Madame Piriac over the dyke and past sundry other obstacles, including a watercourse, to a gate in the wall which formed the frontier of the grounds of Flank Hall. The gate seemed at first to be unopenably fastened, but Audrey showed that she possessed a genius with gates, and opened it with a twist of the hand. They wandered through a plantation and then through an orchard, and at length saw the house. There was not a sign of Aguilar, but the unseen yard-dog began to bark, hearing which, Madame Piriac observed in French: "The property seems a little neglected, but there must be someone at home."