“You will be telling me next that you wish to hire a bathing-machine.”

“Do they have them here? Can one hire a bathing costume, too?”

“Dear heavens, I have no idea.” Lewis took her arm, and they set off along the strand. “Those are the Wicklow Mountains you can see to the south. The walk to Bray Head should take us half an hour or so each way. Then we shall have earned our tea.”

The sea breeze ruffled her hair, which was already escaping from her hat, and it made her crinoline sway in her wake. “If the wind catches me the wrong way, I shall take off into the air. I wish that women could wear trousers.”

Lewis chuckled. “Only on the stage, alas.”

“Are you serious about giving up acting?”

“I am almost never serious about anything.”

“Lewis!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said off-handedly. “I find learning lines that others have written somewhat tedious. I by far prefer to create my own characters.”

“Such as Ned Smith, the cabman’s friend, the character you adopt when carousing in rough taverns. If, of course, you weren’t teasing me.”

“No, it’s true enough. I am rather fond of Ned, though Ned is too fond of the drink, which is why the cabbies are fond of him. He overtips when he is in his cups.”

“What will you do, if you give up the stage?”

“I said I would give up acting, not the theatre. I might try my hand at stage adaptations or directing and I will continue with my reviews, for the meantime. I write as Whyte Tyghe, for the Globe, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. Honestly, Lewis, I can hardly keep up with your many alter egos.”

“I lose track of them myself sometimes. Perhaps I shall write a book about my travels to Algeria.”

“Good heavens! You are a traveller, too?”

“Everyone should see the world, including you, dear Margaret.”

“I would, if I had the means. Would I like Algeria?”

He shook his head decisively. “You must go to a country where your being a female is not a barrier. America, for example. My friend Ira—the actor, you know—he is an American. It is the land of the free, he tells me, though I am not precisely sure I know what that means.”

“What would I do in America?” Margaret asked doubtfully. “I don’t know anyone there.”

“But that is the whole point about travel, whether to America or Algeria or Timbuctoo.”

“I nearly went there once,” Margaret said, laughing at Lewis’s bewildered expression. “Ignore me, do carry on.”