have, Alleyne may save you. For the Lord’s sake, though, go at once and find out.”
“I will. I’ll go down to-morrow. And not a word, please, Doc.”
“Oh, shut up, D. B. It’s part of my work to be silent.”
But all the same the doctor told himself that Valerie should know some day.
III
When Dane left the hotel he walked through the town and onto the flat above. He had a craving to get out to the open sea. Though the interview with the doctor was not final it made no difference to his own feeling about it. But it struck him as he wandered across the hot sandspit that it would be funny if he discovered he had nothing but indigestion. Would that knowledge help him to get well enough to go away with Valerie? Perhaps it would. He had been hypnotized by the fear of the other thing for a good while, or rather he had accepted it as inevitable. He wandered aimlessly along, oblivious of the glaring sun, till he came by chance upon the little hollow on the cliffs where he and Valerie had had their first attaching talk. Thinking of it he remembered that he had left her very much alone for some time, and that here was a day, perhaps the last (though he had not at all clearly in his mind what he was going to do), a day that he could make a pleasant memory. For he felt fairly well, and now he wanted to comfort her for the night he felt she must have spent.
He walked back to the town hardly feeling the heat, and ran home as fast as he could. It was much too early for lunch, but he wanted to see her at once. He walked past the front steps and saw that she was sitting at her desk.
