CHAPTER ONE"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeperin the sand, "there was nothing for it but to leave."Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolvedthe full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowlyfilled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and shehad the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bendinglike a wax candle in the sun. She winked quickly. Accidents were awfulthings. She winked again. The mast was straight; the waves were regular;the lighthouse was upright; but the blot had spread...". nothing for it but to leave," she read."Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play" (the shadow of Archer, her eldestson, fell across the notepaper and looked blue on the sand, and she feltchilly--it was the third of September already), "if Jacob doesn't wantto play"--what a horrid blot! It must be getting late."Where IS that tiresome little boy?" she said. "I don't see him. Run andfind him. Tell him to come at once." ..". but mercifully," shescribbled, ignoring the full stop, "everything seems satisfactorilyarranged, packed though we are like herrings in a barrel, and forced tostand the perambulator which the landlady quite naturally won'tallow...."Such were Betty Flanders's letters to Captain Barfoot--many-paged, tear-stained. Scarborough is seven hundred miles from Cornwall: CaptainBarfoot is in Scarborough: Seabrook is dead. Tears made all the dahliasin her garden undulate in red waves and flashed the glass house in hereyes, and spangled the kitchen with bright knives, and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church, while the hymn-tune played and Mrs.Flanders bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is afortress and widows stray solitary in the open fields, picking upstones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poorcreatures. Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for these two years."Ja--cob! Ja--cob!" Archer shouted."Scarborough," Mrs. Flanders wrote on the envelope, and dashed a boldline beneath; it was her native town; the hub of the universe. But astamp? She ferreted in her bag; then held it up mouth downwards; thenfumbled in her lap, all so vigorously that Charles Steele in the Panamahat suspended his paint-brush.Like the antennae of some irritable insect it positively trembled. Herewas that woman moving--actually going to get up--confound her! He struckthe canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It wastoo pale--greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gullsuspended just so--too pale as usual. The critics would say it was toopale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite withhis landladies' children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and muchgratified if his landladies liked his pictures--which they often did."Ja--cob! Ja--cob!" Archer shouted.Exasperated by the noise, yet loving children, Steele picked nervouslyat the dark little coils on his palette."I saw your brother--I saw your brother," he said, nodding his head, asArcher lagged past him, trailing his spade, and scowling at the oldgentleman in spectacles."Over there--by the rock," Steele muttered, with his brush between histeeth, squeezing out raw sienna, and keeping his eyes fixed on BettyFlanders's back."Ja--cob! Ja--cob!" shouted Archer, lagging on after a second.The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure fromall passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breakingagainst rocks--so it sounded.Steele frowned; but was pleased by the effect of the black--it was justTHAT note which brought the rest together. "Ah, one may learn to paintat fifty! There's Titian..." and so, having found the right tint, up helooked and saw to his horror a cloud over the bay.