‘Beg your pardon?’ asked Ronald, and when the invitation had been repeated conveyed by an instant’s pause some surprise at it. He looked round the tank carefully, but had to point out, with regret, that this seemed quite impossible owing to the way the bushes hung over. ‘But I dare say we’ll meet farther on,’ he said; ‘these curly paths are wonderfully good for meeting people. At least, so one would expect, but Miss Fitzgerald and I didn’t meet anybody. Not a ghost, even, though we were sure we could and were very anxious to.’

‘What have you done with Miss Fitzgerald?’

‘I think she went to find Miss Pym. I think perhaps she was lonely. You don’t believe, I hope, that I’ve dropped her into the tank?’

‘The way you haunt it does seem suspicious!’

‘But she’d have come to the surface again: if I had, you know, I shouldn’t dare come back. No, I came back for the tank; itself – I like water.’ Ronald, gripping the edge of the tank, leaned forward to watch with a smile the reflection of his dangling feet. Milton, sitting down opposite him, took out his pipe and lit it. He observed, ‘You ought to have brought your mother – she would have liked this.’

‘She’s a bad walker – don’t mean she’s got corns or a heart or anything; she’s just lazy.’

‘Or was not sorry, quite possibly, to get you off her hands for the morning,’ laughed Milton with the bluff and stunning impertinence of which only the nervous are capable, and by which no one can be more appalled than themselves.

‘I dare say,’ said Ronald. ‘One does get tired of people.’ He gazed across thoughtfully, not at Milton but at Milton’s reflection, which he was able to watch without raising his eyes, while remaining as impenetrable to his vis-à-vis as the water below him. ‘Such an intelligent girl,’ he remarked – ‘that Miss Warren.’

‘Oh, you think so? Have you been talking?’

‘No,’ said Ronald, ‘she is one of the few people in this caravanserai who have nothing to say to me. I would not say, you know, that she was one of those casual talkers. She would have, I imagine, her moments that she saves herself up for.’

‘She’s considered unfriendly.’

‘Oh! But would you want her to be friendly?’

‘It scarcely affects me – I have known her some time,’ said Milton, making the slight reservation that Hotel time was reckoned differently.

‘Oh, really?’ said Ronald respectfully. ‘You see, where I am concerned she doesn’t appeal as an enterprise. She is already in the family.’

‘Like a disease or a ghost?’ suggested Milton, with a smile that must have been lost to Ronald since his faint image did not reproduce it.