“Come on,” said Nan.  “We must hurry.”

She left no more pauses, but talked all the time, about Newlyn, about the artists, about the horrid children, the fishing, the gulls, the weather.

“And how’s the book?” he asked.

“Nearly done.  I’m waiting for the end to make itself.”

He smiled and looking round at him she saw that he was not smiling at her or her book, but at Gerda, who had stepped off the causeway and was wading in a rock pool.

He must be obsessed with Gerda; he thought of her, apparently, all the time he was talking about other things.  It was irritating for an aunt to bear.

They joined Kay and Gerda on the island.  Kay was prowling about, looking for a way by which to enter the forbidden castle.  Kay always trespassed when he could, and was so courteous and gentle when he was caught at it that he disarmed comment.  But this time he could not manage to evade the polite but firm eye of the fisherman on guard.  They crossed over to Marazion again all together and went to the cafe for supper.

5

It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows.  Nan and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; only Gerda sparse of word, was quiet and dreamy, with her blue eyes opened wide against sleep, for she had not slept until late last night.

“High time she had a holiday,” Barry said of her.  “Four weeks’ grind in August—­it’s beginning to tell now.”

Fussy Barry was about the child.  As bad as Frances Carr with Pamela.  Gerda was as strong as a little pony really, though she looked such a small, white, brittle thing.

They got out maps and schemed out roads and routes over their cigarettes.  Then they strolled about the little town, exploring its alleys and narrow byways that gave on the sea.  The moon had risen now, and Marazion was cut steeply in shadow and silver light, and all the bay lay in shadow and silver too, to where the lights of Penzance twinkled like a great lit church.

Barry thought once, as he had often thought in the past, “How brilliant Nan is, and how gay.  No wonder she never needed me.  She needs no one,” and this time it did not hurt him to think it.  He loved to listen to her, to talk and laugh with her, to look at her, but he was free at last; he demanded nothing of her.  Those restless, urging, disappointed hopes and longings lay dead in him, dead and at peace.  He could not have put his finger on the moment of their death; there had been no moment; like good soldiers they had never died, but faded away, and till to-night he had not known that they had gone.  He would show Nan now that she need fear no more pestering from him; she need not keep on talking without pause whenever they were alone together, which had been her old way of defence, and which she was beginning again now.  They could drop now into undisturbed friendship.  Nan was the most stimulating of friends.  It was refreshing to talk things out with her again, to watch her quick mind flashing and turning and cutting its way, brilliant, clear, sharp, like a diamond.