Then he got the idea that he would sneak home after dark that night and spy upon her. He did not take the launch into the bay, but secured it on the point further on, the point, he remembered, where she had trespassed. Then he made his way cautiously along the rocks among the trees and into the shrubbery in front of his house. As he moved forward he saw her white dress on the drive. In a dark suit himself he was invisible as he stood in a thicket of micracarpa.
Valerie came towards him, blowing her nose. She did not swing along. She walked unevenly kicking at stones in the path, stopping, going on again. She turned and disappeared along the drive, and appeared again. That time, as she moved in the line of light from the study, he was able to see her face. It startled him. Four times he saw it thus, desperate and haggard. He clenched his hands and set his teeth. Good God! Had she got as far as that in disillusionment without his knowing it? He was stunned.
He watched her go inside. A match came to light in her own front room, and then the lamp. He stole nearer till he could clearly see her face against a background of red curtain. He saw her take his picture and look at it. But there was no hatred in her face as she stared at it. The meaning in her expression came over him with the force of sudden revelation.
He crept off through the bushes and round to his back room and sat down on the step of the one door that opened outside. How long he sat there he did not know. It was a fine warm night. Weary of sitting and staring at the sandy path, weary of trying to think, of trying not to think, he got up at last and went to lie in his hammock. He dozed off in spite of himself, and did not wake till the sun came streaming through his cutting upon
