Suddenly she felt as if she could not sit here any longer between Dale and Alicia. She got up.

Dale said at once, “Where are you going?”

“I thought I would rest for a little before the funeral.”

“Wait a minute! You saw March too?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say to you – what did he want to know?”

“Very little, Dale – just when I wore the coat last, and whether any of you had touched me when I was wearing it.”

“And you said?”

“Rafe helped me on with it – I told him that.”

“Well, if it comes to that, I suppose we all touched you.”

She shook her head.

“Not whilst I was wearing the coat.”

He laughed and looked up at her, all his anger gone.

“Darling, I’d just got home – we’d had a most affectionate meeting.”

She began to move away.

“I wasn’t wearing the coat then. Rafe brought it to me afterwards.”

When she had reached the terrace she looked back. The shadow of the cedar had shifted. Dale was still in it, but the sun touched Alicia. At the instant in which Lisle turned she saw Alicia’s hand go up with something bright in it. It dazzled and flew from her to Dale. He reached forward and caught it.

As Lisle went into the house she wondered a little idly what the bright thing had been.

Chapter 41

CISSIE COLE’S funeral was over. With a sigh of relief the little groups about the grave broke up and began to drift away. The Vicar’s surplice dazzled under the bright sun. The flowers were wilting already. Black dresses, much too hot for the day, had a rusty look and showed shiny at the seams. Lisle turned back to put a hand on Miss Cole’s arm and say a word or two in a low voice, and then it was really over. They got into Dale’s car and he drove them home.

There was tea under the cedar, cool drinks as well for anyone who wanted them. A green slope to a blue sea, and the breeze coming off the water. It was all over, and one could set about the uphill business of forgetting.

All over. Lisle said it to herself, but she couldn’t make it sound true. She went away up to her room to take off her black dress. Dale came up too, and she could hear him walking about in his room. She slipped on a short-sleeved washing frock, and presently he opened the communicating door and came through in shirt and flannel trousers.

“Well, that’s a relief! Darling, you look like a little girl in that silly little dress.”

“Little?” She tried to smile. “Do you know how tall I am?”

“Term of endearment, darling.” He smiled at her with his eyes. And then quite suddenly the smile went. “Look here, I’ve got to talk to you, and it’s about something so damnable that I’ve gone putting it off, only now I can’t any longer.”

“Dale – what is it?”

“Darling, I’d give anything in the world not to tell you – or even to put it off, but I can’t. I would if I could, but – well, the fact is I’ve got to tell you for your own sake.”

“Dale!”

She was sitting on her dressing-stool half turned from the glass. He came to her and took her hands.

“Will you try and remember that I hate what I’m going to do – that I’d give anything in the world not to do it? I’ve held my tongue all these years, and if I can’t go on holding it now, it’s because it isn’t safe – for you.”

She drew her hands away. They were cold. She lifted her eyes to his and said,

“Please tell me, Dale.”

“I’ve got to.” He turned away with a groan and began to walk up and down in the room. “It’s about Rafe. You mustn’t go about with him as you’ve been doing – it won’t do.”

Lisle’s head came up. She said quickly,

“What do you mean, Dale?”

“Not what you think – I’m not such a fool as that. Rafe makes love to everyone, but it doesn’t mean a thing.”

“He doesn’t make love to me. Do you think I would let him?”

“Of course not. Darling, I didn’t mean that – I told you I didn’t.”

“Then what did you mean?”

He walked to the middle window, and then swung round to face her.

“Lisle, I’m trying to tell you. Will you just listen and not say anything? Rafe – well, he’s always been like a younger brother. He, and Lal, and I, we were just like brothers and sister. None of us can remember the time when the others weren’t here. Well Rafe was the youngest. There’s not three years between the three of us, but even a year makes a lot of difference when you’re children. He was the one who had to be looked after – got out of scrapes and all that sort of thing. Well, we went on here together till Lal and I got married. That broke the thing up. Lal married Rowland Steyne, and I married Lydia. That left Rafe odd man out. I didn’t think about it at the time – one doesn’t. It was only afterwards I realised that it sent him right off his balance with jealousy. He was eighteen and he was at a loose end between leaving school and going up to Cambridge – and he didn’t like Lydia.”

He began to walk again, passing her and then coming back to pause and look at her. It was a deep distressed look.

“Lisle – has anyone ever told you about Lydia ’s accident?”

“Yes.” She had to moisten her dry lips before they would say the word.

“Who?”

“Rafe – and Mrs. Mallam.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Rafe said she fell. He said-”

“Oh, yes, she fell – poor Lydia. It was the most ghastly show. Never mind what they told you – I’m going to tell you the truth. I’ve never told it to anyone before, but I’m going to tell it now because I’ve got to. We weren’t climbing, you know – Lydia wasn’t strong enough. We were just walking along one of those winding paths – Rowland and Alicia, Lydia and I, the Mallams, and Rafe. We got a bit strung out, and the minute you got round a corner you were out of sight of the others – you’ve got to understand that. You’d be right in the crowd one minute and completely cut off a minute later. Well, we came to a place where the path widened into a sort of bay scooped out of the hill. When you were in the bay you were right out of sight of the people in front and the people behind. Lydia and I and the Steynes were there together. Rafe had just gone on, and the Mallams had fallen a good way back. There was an easy scrambling slope going up from the inner side of the path, but on the outer side there was a most horrible sheer drop. Lal and her husband went up the hill after some flowers. Lydia and I were there together. Well, she sent me back to see if the Mallams were coming. I couldn’t have imagined there was any danger, and I went. But I’d hardly got round the first bend – there was a second one just beyond – when I heard her scream -” He broke off. “Lisle, it was horrible! I went on hearing it for months. When I got round the corner again she was gone. There was a broken bush – she must have caught at it, poor girl, but it wasn’t strong enough to hold her. And just where she had gone over, there was Rafe, staring down after her.”

“Dale!” Her lips hardly framed the word. It came to him as a broken gasp.

He spoke himself, with a calm that appalled her more than any vehemence would have done.

“He pushed her over. I have never had the slightest doubt of it, nor, I think, has Lal. We’ve never discussed it at all. I don’t know if she saw anything. I couldn’t ask her – she was completely broken down. Rowland saw nothing, but Alicia – well, I’ve never been sure-”

Lisle sat there stiff and white, staring at him.

“What are you saying?”

“What I never meant to say to anyone – what I should never have said even to you if – it hadn’t happened again.”

A moment before she would have said that she was past feeling – too shocked, too frozen. Now she knew that there was something more, something worse. She repeated his last word,

“Again-”

He came nearer, catching her by the shoulders so that she felt the warmth of his hands and wondered at it.