Audrey listened to the episode in a reverie.  She was thinking about Musa’s intractability and inexcusable rudeness, and about what she should do in the matter of Madame Piriac’s impending visit to Audrey Moze at Flank Hall, and through the texture of these difficult topics she could see, as it were, shining the sprightly simplicity, the utter ingenuousness, the entirely reliable fidelity of Mr. Gilman.  She felt, rather than consciously realised, that he was a dull man.  But she liked his dullness; it reassured her; it was tranquillising; it was even adorable.  She liked also his attitude towards Moze.  She had never suspected, no one had ever hinted to her, that Moze was full of historic interest.  But looking at it now from the yacht which had miraculously wafted her past the Flank buoy at dead of night, she perceived Moze in a quite new aspect—­a pleasure which she owed to Mr. Gilman’s artless interest in things. (Not that he was artless in all affairs!  No; in the great masculine affairs he must be far from artless, for had he not made all his money himself?)

Then Madame Piriac appeared on deck, armed and determined.  Audrey found, as hundreds of persons had found, that it was impossible to deny Madame Piriac.  Beautiful, gracious, elegant, kind, when she would have a thing she would have it.  Audrey had to descend and prepare herself.  She had to reascend ready for the visit.  But at the critical and dreadful moment of going ashore to affront the crowd she had a saving idea.  She pointed to Flank Hall and its sloping garden, and to the sea-wall against which the high spring tide was already washing, and she suggested that they should be rowed thither in the dinghy instead of walking around by the sea-wall or through’ the village.

“But we cannot climb over that dyke,” Madame Piriac protested.

“Oh, yes, we can,” said Audrey.  “I can see steps in it from here, and I can see a gate at the bottom of the garden.”

“What a vision you have, darling!” murmured Madame Piriac.  “As you wish, provided we get there.”

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