“Ever since I’ve been here.” Mrs. Cornell’s voice was more than soothing, bluffly reassuring as the voice of one who tells a child there is no ghost. “And ever since Mr. Shine got through the pictures! Wallowing in the beauties of nature like the rest of us.”

“Won’t you wallow, too?” Shine indicated the long unoccupied space on the step.

She shook her head:

“I like moving about. Something in this place gets on my nerves, it’s like being in a jail.” On a deep breath she shot out, “I hate it,” and stepped back into the room.

“Going?” Mrs. Cornell veered round to follow her retreating figure.

“Yes. I enjoy the scenery better when it hasn’t got people in it.”

[Pg 55]

[Pg 55]

They looked at each other; a still minute of eye communication.

“She’s all worked up,” he murmured.

Her answer was to point to the two girls and then to Stokes:

“Now she’ll keep her eye on them from somewhere else—probably the side piazza. That’s the way you are when you’re jealous—the sight of it kills you and you can’t stop watching.”

“Lord!” whispered Shine into whose life no such gnawing passions had entered. And he thought of the girl in the page’s dress who was afraid to sit alone, and the man on the wharf brooding within sight of her, and the woman who was hovering round them like a helpless distracted bird.

[Pg 56]

[Pg 56]

III

The launch was on its way back for those of the actors who were leaving. Gabriel, squatting by the engine, calculated the distribution of his time. After he’d taken them across he’d have his supper and then go back for Joe Tracy, who was leaving on the seven fifteen for his vacation. When Joe was disposed of, Gabriel was to meet two Boston sports who had engaged him for a week’s deep-sea fishing at White Beach, twenty-five miles down the coast. It was a strenuous program for the 

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