fact that Great Mexican Oil shares had just risen to L2 3s. apiece.  She knew that she had 180,000 of them, and now under the thin protection of Mr. Spatt she tried to reckon 180,000 times L2 3s.  She could not do the sum.  At any rate she could not be sure that she did it correctly.  However, she was fairly well convinced beneath the dark, impenetrable sky that the answer totalled nearly L400,000, that was, ten million francs.  And the ridiculousness of an heiress who owned over ten million francs wandering about a place like Frinton with a man like Mr. Spatt, searching for another man like Musa, struck her as exceeding the bounds of the permissible.  She considered that she ought to have been in a magnificent drawing-room of her own in Park Lane or the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, welcoming counts, princes, duchesses, diplomats and self-possessed geniuses of finished manners, with witty phrase that displayed familiarity with all that was profoundest and most brilliant in European civilisation.  Life seemed to be disappointing her, and assuredly money was not the thing that she had imagined it to be.

She thought: 

“If this walking lamp-post does not say something soon I shall scream.”

Mr. Spatt said: 

“It seems to be blowing up for rain.”

She screamed in the silent solitude of Frinton.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologised quickly.  “I thought I saw something move.”

“One does,” faltered Mr. Spatt.

They were now in the shopping street, where in the mornings the elect encounter each other on expeditions to purchase bridge-markers, chocolate, bathing costumes and tennis balls.  It was a black and empty canyon through which the wind raced.

“He may be down—­down on the shore,” Mr. Spatt timidly suggested.  He seemed to be suggesting suicide.

They turned and descended across the Greensward to the shore, which was lined with hundreds of bathing huts, each christened with a name, and each deserted, for the by-laws of the Frinton Urban District Council judiciously forbade that the huts should be used as sleeping-chambers.  The tide was very low.  They walked over the wide flat sands, and came at length to the sea’s roar, the white tumbling of foamy breakers, and the full force of the south-east wind.  Across the invisible expanse of water could be discerned the beam of a lightship.  And Audrey was aware of mysterious sensations such as she had not had since she inhabited Flank Hall and used to steal out at nights to watch the estuary.  And she thought solemnly:  “Musa is somewhere near, existing.”  And then she thought:  “What a silly thought!  Of course he is!”

“I see somebody coming!” Mr. Spatt burst out in a dramatic whisper.  But the precaution of whispering was useless, because the next instant, in spite of himself, he loudly sneezed.