He began seriously to wonder how far he had gone and where; began to worry. If he had lost his way, it would be sensible to sit down somewhere and rest, possibly to wait for the fog to lift. He half suspected that the hotel lay only a few hundred feet off; certainly he had not gone so far but that, if the night were clear and there was no blackout, he could see it from where he was. He had turned back. Sure that he was headed in the right direction, he plodded on, expecting his feet to strike the macadam at any moment and thus find his way home again.

But they did not. Tired at last, he reached down to feel the ground, found it smooth and clear, and lowered himself to the sand. He would rest a few moments before going on. Beneath his palms the earth vibrated to the pound of the surf. A yellowish murk moved rapidly over the island, momentarily lifting and closing, never obscuring, never quite revealing, the brilliant sky overhead. He thought: somewhere above that fog tonight is the full moon Ethel has been waiting for. His heart turned suddenly with pity then—for Ethel lying under the harsh electric light with a magazine, while he wandered in the mist with his dilemma. He stretched at full length on his stomach, his head turned to one side and his cheek on the sand. For an instant the light shone suddenly wide and clear; he saw the breaking waves not thirty feet away; he saw a small object glistening on the beach within arm’s length. He reached out; it was coated with a sticky grit. Some half-­awakened sense within him responded as to a painfully familiar object, and the astonished hand closed on the bottle of sun-­tan oil.

He heard the hissing scattering running sound of pebbles as the waves slid back down the beach after the thundering breakers had cast them far up the sloping sand; he felt the cool spray on his face and hands. He held the bottle tight in his now-­sticky palm, the irritating grit already under his fingernails. He thought of Cliff.

He thought of himself sitting on the beach in the hot sun of the morning, while Cliff bent over him (as he had not permitted him to do) and touched his shoulders with the oil. In imagination he felt the broad fingers moving down his bare arms, as they had moved down Bill Howard’s; and he felt the two strong hands moving over his upper arms, shoulders, and back. It was an act so personal and intimate that he could not have stood it. And suddenly, to his horror, he felt a slow rude pressure growing in his loins, so that he was no longer able to lie face down in the sand; he was obliged to turn over on his back.