“Does your other self approve?” he said, laughing.

“My other self is watching us both very closely, Louis.  I—­I wish, sometimes, she were dead!  Louis!  Louis! as I am now, here in your arms, I thought I had descended sufficiently to meet you on your own plane.  But—­you seem higher up—­at moments....  And now, when you are going, you tell my other self to call in the creature we let loose together, for it will have no longer any counterpart to caress....  Louis!  I do love you; how can I let you go!  Can you tell me?  What am I to do?  There are times—­there are moments when I cannot endure it—­the thought of losing the disgrace of your lips—­your arms—­the sound of your voice.  Don’t go and leave me like this—­don’t go—­”

Miss Suydam’s head fell.  She was crying.

* * * * *

The eagle on the wet beach, one yellow talon firmly planted on its offal, tore strip after strip from the quivering mass.  The sun etched his tinted shadow on the sand.

When the tears of Miss Suydam had been appropriately dried, they turned and retraced their steps very slowly, her head resting against his shoulder, his arm around her thin waist, her own hand hanging loosely, trailing the big straw hat and floating veil.

They spoke very seldom—­very, very seldom.  Malcourt was too busy thinking; Virginia too stunned to realise that, it was, now, her other austere self, bewildered, humiliated, desperate, which was walking amid the solitude of sky and sea with Louis Malcourt, there beneath the splendour of the westering sun.

The eagle, undisturbed, tore at the dead thing on the beach, one yellow talon embedded in the offal.

Their black chair-boy lay asleep under a thicket of Spanish bayonet.

“Arise, O Ethiope, and make ready unto us a chariot!” said Malcourt pleasantly; and he guided Virginia into her seat while the fat darky climbed up behind, rubbing slumber from his rolling and enormous eyes.

Half-way through the labyrinth they met Miss Palliser and Wayward.

“Where on earth have you been?” asked Virginia, so candidly that Wayward, taken aback, began excuses.  But Constance Palliser’s cheeks turned pink; and remained so during her silent ride home with Wayward.

Lately the world had not been spinning to suit the taste of Constance Palliser.  For one thing Wayward was morose.  Besides he appeared physically ill.  She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might better have asked him for her peace of mind.

Another matter:  Virginia, the circumspect, the caste-bound, the intolerant, the emotionless, was displaying the astounding symptoms peculiar to the minx!  And she had neither the excuse of ignorance nor of extreme youth.  Virginia was a mature maiden, calmly cognisant of the world, and coolly alive to the doubtful phases of that planet.  And why on earth she chose to affiche herself with a man like Malcourt, Constance could not comprehend.