Dulcie continued to prattle. It was evidently her idea of good manners, to permit no interval of silence.
"It was sweet of Mrs. Romayne to bring me down in her car, don't you think, Mr. Waller? She's always awfully sweet to me. So's everybody in the Hotel, really. My Pops says I'm ever such a lucky girl to have such heaps of friends. Of course, I do what I can to help people—like talking French, or anything like that—I've taught the Morgans ever such a lot of French."
"They've been here a long time, haven't they?"
"A whole month, and they're staying on for ten days more. I think they must be quite well off, really, you know. Oh"—she clapped her hands over her mouth—"oh, I forgot! Pops says I'm never to talk over other-people-in-the-Hotel's business. You won't say anything, will you?"
"No, of course not. I'm a particularly safe person, as it happens. I get a great many secrets confided to me, and it's just as if they were dropped into a great well."
The rock seemed to be growing harder and harder, and moreover the glare of the sun was still strong enough to necessitate closed eyes, which might look rather silly—besides, he had been lying on his back long enough to preclude any suspicion of not having chosen the position on purpose—so Denis rolled over on to his front, and felt far more comfortable.
"Oh, look, Mr. Waller! Gwennie and David have got right out to that rock where their daddy is. They're waving."
Dulcie agitated a bathing-cloak, and Denis, under pretext of waving his hand, was enabled to sit up again.
"Gwennie swims awfully well, I think, for a little child of eight; don't you, Mr. Waller? Look, she's going to dive. I wish I could dive as well as she can. I dive awfully badly. Pops always says he's going to give me some lessons, but he never has time."
She looked wistfully at Denis, and his immediate impulse was to say that he would give her diving lessons. Only a caution born of experience restrained him. There was at least one serious impediment in the way of teaching Dulcie to dive.
At last he said:
"I think I could give you a few hints myself."
"Oh, Mr. Waller, would you really? I do think it's sweet of you. I can do it in a sort of a way, you know—only not well—and if only you'd show me—I'm sure you dive marvellously yourself."
"No, indeed I don't."
"People always say that."
"I shall teach you the theory," Denis explained earnestly. "It's much the soundest way of learning—far more use than just watching somebody else doing it. As a matter of fact, my doctor's advised me not to do any diving this summer."
"Oh, Mr. Waller, what a shame, just when you've come to the South of France!"
"It is, isn't it?" said Denis with a melancholy smile, and at once began to feel that it was.
"Are you delicate, Mr. Waller?"
"Not in the least. I'm rather exceptionally strong, as it happens. Muscularly, that is. But ever since a fall I had, out hunting last year, I find that diving or—anything of that kind—is apt to give me a violent headache."
"What a shame."
"Please don't say anything about it to anyone, will you?"
Denis was frequently impelled to end his conversations in this manner. It made him feel safer. On this occasion, however, he really did not know whether or not he hoped that Dulcie would take him at his word. He had only been at the Hôtel d'Azur a week, but he had seen almost at once that it would be necessary to find a convincing and creditable reason for his great disinclination to practise diving—a disinclination due far less to physical cowardice than to his terror of looking foolish over his first attempts.
"Are you very keen on hunting, Mr. Waller?"
"Yes—that is, I haven't done a great deal," hastily said Denis, wishing that he had chosen the Row as mise en scène for his catastrophe.
"I say, Dulcie, don't you think it's time we went in?"
"Oh yes, Mr. Waller," cried Dulcie, who always agreed, with every sign of eagerness, to suggestions made by Hotel visitors.
They moved to the edge of the rock and slid, in postures of safety rather than of elegance, into the warm blue water.
(2)
On quite another rock, separated from the main plateau by a narrow channel of mildly surging sea, sat Olwen, the eldest Morgan, with Patrick Romayne.
She was a child of grave-eyed, slender beauty, with blue, deep, intelligent eyes like her mother's, and bright, thick hair, cut into a square gold frame for her small sun-browned face.
She wore a very faded and scanty blue bathing-suit that exposed her soft, childish neck, and long slim legs and arms, all uniformly tanned to a smooth, polished bronze.
Patrick, much fairer than she was, had only achieved an uncomfortable scarlet that made his light hair and eyelashes look almost white.
"Shall I oil you?" Olwen enquired.
"Yes, please. Only go frightfully carefully where it's blistered, if you don't mind."
"All right."
She tipped some coconut-oil out of the bottle that lay beside Patrick and applied it carefully to his shoulders and back.
"Thanks awfully. Sure you don't want to go in and swim with David and Gwennie?"
"Quite sure, thanks."
There was a silence. Then Patrick said:
"Where's that Dulcie person?"
"Oh, somewhere or other. She's all right, I expect."
"Why did you ask her to come?"
"Mummie made us. She's sorry for her or something."
"Well, I'm much sorrier for the people who've got to be with her," said Patrick.
"Yes, so'm I."
"I expect the wretched kid has a pretty mouldy existence, on the whole. Isn't she the child of a sort of Polytechnic agent or something?"
"Yes. At least, I don't know what he is exactly, but he speaks marvellous French and German and English, and when he's here he arranges dances and excursions and things, in the Hotel, but part of the time he's dashing about between here and Paris, or Paris and London. I think he brings people over who don't want to travel by themselves—old ladies and things. Dulcie just stays here all the time."
"Even in the winter? I say, I saw a fish then."
"They do show up sometimes. There are masses of them in the Réserve, just in front of the Hotel where they give you bouillabaisse. No, in the winter they go to the Winter Sports places."
"Rather fun."
"Dulcie doesn't have much fun. She isn't allowed to do any of the sports and things unless some of the Hotel visitors offer to take her out with them."
"Why not? Expense or something?"
"I suppose so. Patrick, d'you like bouillabaisse?"
"I haven't tasted it yet. We're going to the Réserve to-morrow. That'll do for my back, I think. Thanks awfully, Olwen."
Olwen put the cork back into the bottle, but they continued to sit side by side, clasping their knees, on the warm surface of the rock.
After a perceptible hesitation, Patrick said, frowning at the water:
"I say, couldn't you