“I shall not return to the yacht,” he said, with an excited bitterness, after they had walked some distance along one of the paths leading past low bushes into the wilderness of the marsh land that bounded the estuary to the south.  The sky was still invisible, but there was now a certain amount of diffused light, and the pale path could easily be distinguished amid the sombreness of green.  The yacht was hidden behind one of the knolls.  No sound could be heard.  The breeze had died.  That which was around them—­on either hand, above, below—­was the universe.  They knew that they stood still in the universe, and this idea gave their youth the sensation of being very important.

“What is that which you say?” Audrey demanded sharply in French, as Musa had begun in French.  She was aware, not for the first time with Musa, of the sudden possibilities of drama in a human being.  She could scarcely make out his face, but she knew that he was in a mood for high follies; she knew that danger was gathering; she knew that the shape of the future was immediately to be moulded by her and him, and chiefly by herself.  She liked it.  The sensation of her importance was reinforced.

“I say I shall never return to the yacht,” he repeated.

She thought compassionately: 

“Poor foolish thing!”

She was incalculably older and wiser than this irrational boy.  She was the essence of wisdom.

She said, with acid detachment: 

“But your luggage, your belongings?  What an idea to leave in this manner!  It is so polite, so sensible!”

“I shall not return.”

“Of course,” she said, “I do not at all understand why you are going.  But what does that matter?  You are going.”  Her indifference was superb.  It was so superb that it might have driven some men to destroy her on the spot.

“Yes, you understand!  I told you last night,” said Musa, overflowing with emotion.

“Oh!  You told me?  I forget.”

“Naturally Monsieur Gilman is rich.  I am not rich, though I shall be.  But you can’t wait,” Musa sneered.

“I do not know what you mean,” said Audrey.

“Ah!” said Musa.  “Once I told you that Tommy and Nick lent me the money with which to live.  For me, since then, you have never been the same being.  How stupid I was to tell you!  You could not comprehend such a thing.  Your soul is too low to comprehend it.  Permit me to say that I have already repaid Nick.  And at the first moment I shall repay Tommy.  My position is secure.  I have only to wait.  But you will not wait.  You are a bourgeoise of the most terrible sort.  Opulence fascinates you.  Mr. Gilman has opulence.  He has nothing else.  But he has opulence, and for you that is all.”

In an instant her indifference, self-control, wisdom vanished.  It was a sad exhibition of frailty; but she enjoyed it, she revelled in it, giving play to everything in herself that was barbaric.  The marsh around them was probably as it had been before the vikings had sailed into it, and Audrey rushed back with inconceivable speed into the past and became the primeval woman of twenty centuries earlier.  Like almost all women she possessed this wondrous and affrighting faculty.