While they played dominoes, the day deteriorated. They sat down to lunch with a Sunday halfheartedness, Clem short-tempered from not having had his way and Kenny petulant from having had his. Marion, the maid, came and went between the kitchen and the dining room, as though they were, all three, fractious children who needed supervision. The cold meat that had seemed a good idea in the morning now simply contributed to the day’s feeling of being left over.

After lunch, Nettie proposed again the walk that now nobody wanted, and out of sheer perverseness they walked on the deserted beach. Nettie wore a raincoat and Kenny a waterproof jacket with a broken zipper. A wind had come up, releasing little swirls from sand that had been tightly packed all winter. The sky hung over the low-lying land, huge as a sky in a Dutch painting. Clem could not light his cigarette, although he persisted in trying. Nettie struggled to fold the flapping triangle of her scarf over her hair. After she had accomplished this, Kenny put his hand in hers, but when Clem took her hand on the other side the child pulled away and ran ahead of them down the beach.

“Children know everything,” Nettie said.

“Well, they have a kind of insight into fundamentals. I don’t think one can call that knowledge.” He would not let her withdraw her hand from his. “You look such an orphan in that raincoat.”

“I always look a bit like that, apparently.”

“That’s what May said.”

“What did she say?”

“That you looked a waif. That we should do more for you.”

“What did you say?”

“I looked preoccupied and said we had our own lives to lead.”

Freeing her fingers at last, she put both her hands in her pockets and they walked a little way in silence.

He looked at her, faintly amused. “What should I have said?”

“I don’t know. Did you mean that when you said it? I mean, what did you feel?”

“You’d be happier if I had felt a liar and a hypocrite?”

“That, at least, would be a redeeming feature.”

He shrugged. “I rather thought I’d redeemed myself by telling you about it.” He was a little bored. “I see no object in hurting people unnecessarily.”

“It would be all right if it were necessary?”

“You say all the wrong things,” he observed. “You have no experience—you’re thrown back on your intuitions, like Kenny. That’s why you make these judgments on yourself and others.”

She spread her hands, distending the pockets of her raincoat. “I’m afraid of this. Of not knowing what will happen next.”

“Ah, well,” he said, offhandedly, “you would have come to some things pretty soon in any case, if only out of curiosity. As for the other things, you simply attract them by worrying about them. What you fear most will happen to you—that is the law.”