When she heard the faint rustle in the seagrass to her right, she raised her head a little, and was just opening her mouth to say, “Hello, Gretchen,” when another head appeared.

“Ah,” said Theodore, “I thought I’d find you here.”

“Where’s Gretchen?” said Mary.

“Back at the inn. She wanted to rest.”

“Oh.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

She didn’t answer, but he sat down beside her anyway. He picked up the sketchbook and looked at her drawing.

“It’s not finished,” she said.

“Looks promising,” he remarked, glancing toward the little ruined shelter. He put the sketchbook down on the other side of him, so she couldn’t reach it, and then lay down full-length. She felt a little awkward sitting up, and wondered if she should put her hat back on. “You should lie down,” he said. “The sun’s good for you. At least, a little sun. When I’m in the sun like this,” he said contentedly, “I pretend I’m a lizard.”

She laughed. “I was just thinking of lizards when you came.”

“There you are then,” he said. “Great minds think alike. Or perhaps lizards do.”

She lay back. She was all alone, lying beside a man, but nobody could see.

So when he turned and gently kissed her, she didn’t resist. She let him do it. And when he said, “You are so beautiful, Mary,” she felt as if she was.

And soon he began to kiss her in a way she had never been kissed before, exploring her lips and her tongue, and she knew that this must be the beginning of what she should not do. But she let him all the same and soon she was responding, and she felt her heart beating faster and faster. “What if someone should see?” she gasped.

“There’s no one within miles,” he said. Then his kisses grew more passionate, and his hands began to rove, and she became so excited that although she knew she mustn’t, she didn’t want him to stop. And why not? she thought. For if not now, perhaps it would be never.

She could feel him, hard against her. He was beginning to loosen her dress. His breath was coming in little gasps.

Then Gretchen’s voice. Gretchen’s voice from the beach. Gretchen’s voice coming nearer.

“Mary?”

Theodore cursed, and pulled away from her. For a second she lay there, feeling abandoned. Then, with a sudden surge of panic, she scrambled behind Theodore, seized her sketch pad, found her hat and crammed it on her head. So that a moment or two later, as Gretchen came over the sand dune, she saw Mary, perhaps a little untidy, but quietly sketching, and her brother, sitting a few yards away, staring at her as she came toward them, with the stony gaze of a serpent that is ready to strike.