Miss Pym never went near the tennis courts, but a prospect of walking down there and appearing publicly with Mrs Kerr was delightful (poor Emily, scrambling alone in the hills!). She abandoned a plan she had, still embryonic, of going down to the shops, and wondered whether their two names – her own and Mrs Kerr’s – might not, henceforward, begin to be coupled. She had a queer little thrill and held open the swing-door with gratitude, almost with reverence. Mrs Kerr with a vague inclination of the head passed out before her. They crossed the gravel together under the hundred windows of the Hotel.

When they turned out of the gates, however, Miss Pym flinched and felt giddy. For there stood Miss Fitzgerald, twisting her fingers together and staring straight at them. Had she been awaiting them there, malign and patient? Had they walked into an ambush? Then she saw how drained-out, how void of intention, Emily was. She seemed hardly to see them. She might have crept out here to bleed – but her wounded presence still was an outrage. Miss Pym looked away.

‘There’s Miss Fitzgerald!’ said Mrs Kerr pleasantly.

‘Oh? – Yes.’

‘Musn’t she be waiting for you?’

‘I – ’

‘You musn’t let me be selfish,’ said Mrs Kerr.

Miss Fitzgerald, who must gradually have brought them into focus, wheeled round nervously and hurried away. Everything that, abroad, an English lady takes out with her swung from her arm and bumped as she fled: the coloured straw satchel, the native umbrella, the golf-jersey, the net bag supplementing the satchel. There streamed from them, to Miss Pym’s perception, a pitiful wraith. With all these, in shining readiness for the day’s excursion, Emily had presented herself at her friend’s door – less than an hour ago.

‘Going all by herself?’ observed Mrs Kerr.

‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Pym, and after a moment cautiously licked her lips.

Mrs Kerr, balancing her parasol on her shoulder, walked on, looking ahead serenely. She did not seem to be wondering what on earth one of them was to say next; she did not look as though it even remotely concerned her. There were so many things that she might have said just now that Miss Pym could have taken up easily, but she did not say one of them, only exposed with indifference her profile to the sidelong, zealous research of Miss Pym. Her profile did not commit her: it expressed an ironic indulgence to fashion in the line of a hat-brim, the soft undulation of hair, an earring’s pendulous twinkle, the melting suave lines of a scarf round the throat. Mrs Kerr took fashion in and subdued it and remained herself.