Slowly we returned together across the cornfields, I and the woman who had hardly deigned to refuse me. Since our final rapid exchange, that had ended with her demand "How if he had it in my arms?" not a word had passed between us. In that one insolent sentence she had not merely put my pretensions out of existence: she had made them as if they had never been. That they could never be again I knew only too well. Therefore, in silence we passed under the shadow of St Enogat Church, crossed the little space opposite the Café de la Mer, and entered the winding lanes to Ker Annic. At the gate of the villa Madge met us with a peremptory question. "Where's Jennie? Isn't she with you?" she demanded. She gave a quick glance behind her as she spoke. Obviously she wasn't. Madge glanced over her shoulder again. "Then don't for goodness sake say she hasn't been. Alec's stamping up and down the garden--says she's been seen with young Arnaud somewhere at the back of beyond on a bicycle. I sent her to bathe with you, Julia." "She did," said Julia quickly. "Then just tell him that and say she must have gone into town or something. I know she has been back, because I looked into her room and saw her half-dried costume. You quieten Alec down, George. Have you had tea?" But in spite of my efforts to placate Alec, I found the fat badly in the fire at Ker Annic. Alec raged up and down the pergola as if he had been caged within it. "Exactly what I said would happen! I knew it all along!" he stormed. "Noble saw 'em--no mistake possible, he says--pedalling all over Brittany with Tom, Dick and Harry.... Where did she get that bicycle? I haven't seen any bicycle about here! First I've heard of a bicycle!" "Simmer down, Alec. There's no great harm in a bicycle ride after all." "If she's been for one she's been for a dozen for all I know. She was sent off to bathe." "Well, she did bathe." "Were you there? Did you see her?" he challenged me, now suspicious at every point. "Yes. She bathed with Julia. I waited for them." "You waited for Julia, you mean. Nipped in and out so as to be able to say she'd been and then dashed off with this fellow, I suppose. Look here, he appears to be a protégé of yours, but I want to know more about him before there's any more of this. What does he go about in that rig for? Why does he talk French like that?" (This last headed the list of his offences in Alec's eyes.) "There's something fishy about the whole thing. Jennie sees him sketching, evidently doesn't know any more than the man in the moon who he is, and goes up to him and speaks to him in French and he answers in English! Then he says he's a level-time man, but touched in the bellows. He's about as much touched in the bellows as I am!... Who is he? Did he really stay with you? How did you get to know him?" "He did stay with me. He's perfectly straight. Don't make such a fuss."