rang rich and deep-throated on the crystal atmosphere. Miss Saunders and Miss Tracy linked arms and moved off toward the headlands. Receding in the amber light they were like a picture from some antique romance—the noble lady and her page. One in narrow casings of crimson brocade, the other in short swinging kilt and braided jacket of more sober gray. Shine, fascinated, watched them pacing slowly over the burnished grass. [Pg 44]Flocks of sea-gulls, roused by their voices, rose into the air, poised and wheeled, one moment dark, the next floating shapes of gold. He turned to go and saw that Stokes was watching them too, intent like a hungry dog, the hand that held a stalk of feathered grass against his lips, trembling. [Pg 44] The photographer shouldered his camera and went toward the house. A jeweled brightness of garden extended along its seaward front. Beyond this was the one stretch of cultivated turf on the island, an emerald slope leading to the cuplike hollow that held the amphitheater. He skirted the side balcony, the wide-flung doors giving a glimpse of an entrance hall, and turning the corner emerged upon the land front of the long capacious building. The surroundings on this side had been left as nature made them—rock shelves and ledges, devoid of vegetation, a path winding round them from the entrance to the wharf. Hayworth showed across the channel in a clustering of gray roofs from which smoke skeins rose straight into the suave rose-washed sky. The water [Pg 45]rushed between, a swollen tide, threads of white dimpled eddies, telling of its racing speed. [Pg 45] The door on this side of the house opened directly into the living-room. No hall within or porch without interfered with the view; the path ended unceremoniously at the foot of two broad steps that led to the threshold. On the lower of these steps Shine found a lady sitting smoking a cigarette. This was the Maria of the cast, Mrs. Cornell in private life. She was still in her costume, her redundant figure swelling over the traditional laced bodice, the rouge on her cheeks hardly showing against the coat of sunburn a week at Gull Island had laid on. He had found her as easy as himself, good-humoredly loquacious and not involved in the prevailing discord. An admirable person to clear up mysteries. He sank down beside her on the step and took the cigarette box she flipped toward him. “Wouldn’t you think,” she said, “a man as rich as this Mr. Driscoll would fix up round here better?”
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