He wondered a little to find her seeking privacy, even for a few days.  Just a whim of hers, no doubt!  Was she not ever a creature of whims?  And it would not last.  He remembered how once young Eric Baron had told him that she needed popularity as a flower needs the sun.  His rose of the world had not been created to bloom unseen.  The boy had been absurdly long-suffering, unbelievably blind.  How bitter, how cruel, had been his disillusion, Courteney could only guess.  Had she ever cared, ever regretted, he wondered?  But no, he was sure she had not.  She would care for nothing until the bloom faded.  Then, indeed, possibly, remorse might come.

Someone passing his table paused and spoke—­the managing director of the Hurley Bay Theatre and of a score of others, a man he knew slightly, older than himself.  “The hive swarms in vain,” he said.  “The queen refuses to emerge.”

Courteney’s expression was supremely cynical.  “I was not aware that she was of such a retiring disposition,” he said.

The other man laughed.  He was an American, Ellis Grant by name, a man of gross proportions, but keen-eyed, iron-jawed, and successful.  “There is a rumour,” he said, “that she is about to be married.  Possibly that might account for her shyness.”

His look was critical.  Courteney threw back his head almost with defiance.  “It doesn’t interest me,” he said curtly.

Ellis Grant laughed again and passed on.  He valued his acquaintanceship with the writer.  He would not jeopardize it with over-much familiarity.  But he did not believe in the utter lack of interest that he professed.  No living man who knew her could be wholly indifferent to the doings of Rosa Mundi.  The fiery charm of her, her passionate vitality, made that impossible.

Courteney finished his dinner and went out.  The night was almost as hot as the day had been.  He turned his back on the Pier, that was lighted from end to end, and walked away down the long parade.

He was beginning to wish himself out of the place.  He had an absurd feeling of being caught in some web of Fate that clung to him tenaciously, strive as he would.  Grant’s laugh of careless incredulity pursued him.  There had been triumph also in that laugh.  No doubt the fellow anticipated a big haul on Rosa Mundi’s night.

And again there rose before him the memory of young Eric Baron’s ardent face.  “I’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have me,” the boy had said to him once.

The boy had been a fool, but straight.  The woman—­well, the woman was not the marrying sort.  He was certain of that.  She was elusive as a flame.  Impatiently yet again he flung the thought of her from him.  What did it matter to him?  Why should he be haunted by her thus?  He would not suffer it.

He tramped to the end of the parade and stood looking out over the dark sea.  He was sorry for that adopted child of hers.  That face of innocence rose before him clear against the gathering dark.  Not much chance for the child, it seemed!  Utterly unspoilt and unsophisticated at present, and the property of that demi-mondaine!  He wondered if there could be any relationship between them.  There was something in the child’s eyes that in some strange fashion recalled the eyes of Rosa Mundi.  So might she once have gazed in innocence upon a world unknown.