It was Blea Tarn, one of the many of that name, which they made peculiarly theirs, their favourite bathing-place, their best lunch-room. Effie stretched herself luxuriously on the close-cropped turf, at peace in mind and body. “Sam,” she asked, “have you noticed that Frump at the Inn? She sits behind me at dinner.” “No,” said Sam truthfully. “When I’m with you I notice nobody else. And I don’t know how you saw her if she sits behind you.” “Eyes in the back of my head,” she explained. “You have them when you’re a woman. Do you mind if I give her a shock?” “You would if she could see you now,” he said. “Yes, but she doesn’t deserve it,” said Effie complacently. She surveyed herself and Sam did the same. She pleased them both, taking her sun-bath there on the mossy turf. “But I may shock her?” “You may do anything,” he said. “Thank God for that,” said Effie joyously, and something glittered in the sun and fell with a splash far into the tarn. “Too deep to dive for it,” she decided. “Bang goes a shilling and I’m glad. I never liked pretence.” “I say!” Sam protested, and then fell silent comprehendingly. She looked at him and greeted his silence with a nod. “I shan’t catch cold,” she said, holding up her finger where the wedding ring had been. “I feel better now I’m rid of that.” The remarkable fact was that Sam understood. His education had progressed and he knew that it was not for the Frump at the Inn that she shed the imitation wedding ring which for form’s sake he had suggested she should wear: it was for him. The ring was counterfeit, it was a false symbol of something which was not true: it had no place in the Marbeck scheme. She curled up happily like a stroked cat, partly in sheer physical well-being, partly in gladness at her scheme’s success. “And to think,” she crooned, “that I am a wicked woman!” “Effie,” he pleaded, taking her hand. “Don’t.” “As if I care,” she said, rolling over on to her back and taking his hand with her to shade her eyes. “I might have been doing this all my life.” Indeed, in her perfect absence of embarrassment, she might. “Wicked!” She shied a stone after the wedding ring into the tarn and laughed at a world well lost. “The Frump won’t understand, my dear, but I think you do.” “I think I do,” said Sam, but the fullness of understanding had not come to him yet.