Buick was outside.
"Who's driving, Coral?" enquired Buckland, speaking rather too loudly. It was the first time he had called her Coral in public.
"I'll drive myself, for a change. Get in, everyone."
"Isn't Patrick coming?" asked Buckland uneasily.
"No, he says he's got a book he wants to finish. Get in, Mr. What-is-it—oh, hell, can't we all use Christian names and have done with it? I'm Coral."
"I'm Hilary, and she's Angie."
Denis said nothing. He was divided between his anxiety to please the people with whom he found himself, and prove himself at home in their group, and his nervous, middle-class anxiety as to the conventionalities. He felt sure that the Morgans, for instance, wouldn't exchange Christian names with hotel acquaintances. Mrs. Romayne, unaware of these conflicting points of view, settled the matter for him.
"You're Denis, I know. You're not Irish, are you?"
"No—no, I'm not. My grandfather, as a matter of fact, was Scotch—my mother's father. I believe I'm entitled to wear the plaid of the——"
"Hop in," said Buckland. "You can't wear kilts here, if that's what you're after."
The laughter that followed seemed to Denis unnecessary. He felt rather disappointed in Mrs. Moon, but she looked lovely in a pale moonlight-blue pyjama suit, cut very low, with her thick, fair curls of hair brushed back behind her ears.
Almost like Esther Ralston, or someone, thought Denis. He sat next to Buckland, who, with his accustomed lack of manners, had climbed first into the car and taken his place next to Angie Moon. The car was a wide one, but Denis could feel the hard, swelling thews and sinews of Buckland's substantial thigh, pressing against his own, and the contact displeased and offended him.
He was glad when the Buick, after flying dangerously round the steep curves of the road, presently drew up with grinding brakes at the entrance to a little white villa, standing in the midst of pines and olives, by the side of the coast.
"I spotted the name on the gate, just as I was going to pass it," said Mrs. Romayne.
They got out. Denis stood politely at the door of the car, extending a hand to assist Angie Moon, but she did not seem to see it, and again Denis felt snubbed.
It was the first time that he had been to a French house that was neither a shop nor a hotel, and he thought the tiny garden, with a small, romantic fountain splashing in a stone basin, very pretty.
A woman in a black dress and white apron came to the door, smiled at them and said:
"Par ici, messieurs-dames. Sur la terrasse."
They followed her in single file across a little circular room, evidently a living-room, and then through a side door, to a kind of pavilion, an oblong of white pavement set between white pillars, overlooking the sea and roofed in with thick, twisted vines. Wicker chairs with bright cretonne cushions stood about, and a round marble-topped table held a tray and coffee-cups. Sitting upright in front of it was a rather monumental lady in a black evening dress, talking to a small group of people. She broke off—well she might, thought Denis—at the sight of five visitors coming in, one after another, and there was a good deal of noise, some laughter from Mrs. Romayne, and a few—but not enough—introductions.
An acute attack of self-consciousness invaded Denis. He was amongst those—they were in the majority—who had neither been introduced themselves, nor had anyone else introduced to them, and the absence of these formalities left him uncertain, and afraid of doing the wrong thing.
Moreover there were not nearly enough chairs to go round. This was pointed out by the lady in black. She looked exactly as Denis had imagined that a successful lady-novelist—for so he designated her in his thoughts—would look—dark, and massive, and rather imperious. She might have been any age between forty-eight and sixty. Her voice was deep, and rather commanding.
"Some of you must take cushions, and sit on the edge of the cliff. Don't fall over."
Mrs. Romayne threw herself into one of the wicker armchairs. Denis hesitated, looked round for Angie Moon, and saw with disgust that she and Buckland, carrying cushions, had already disappeared into the shadow of the olive trees that fringed the little terrace on the cliffs.
"It's much nicer outside. Let's go," said, in a very soft voice, one of the girls who had stood up when first they came in, and had shaken hands rather indiscriminately.
She picked up some more coloured cushions.
"Allow me."
Denis became more at ease with the utterance of one of his favourite formulas. It made him feel chivalrous to take the cushions from the girl and carry them out, and she was so tiny that he unconsciously had the illusion of being himself tall, and strong, and protective.
He glanced at her once or twice, as they settled themselves in an angle of wall and tree-trunk, very close to the edge of the rocks, and she lit a cigarette.
She was so small and slight that she could almost have been mistaken for a child, and there was something childish also in her little round head, with the fine, straight dark hair, hanging in a fringe almost to her eyebrows. Her narrow little olive face was striking rather than pretty, but her eyes—enormous and brilliant—shone like dancing amber flames above the glow of her cigarette.
"Won't you smoke too?"
"Thank you, I think I will."
He took a cigarette from the black enamel case she held out to him, noting from force of habit, as the indigent do, that it, as well as the cigarettes inside it, was of an expensive variety.
He prepared himself to begin the conversation with the enquiry: "Do you know the South of France well?"
He thought this was a very good opening, and had made use of it several times already.
The girl, however, spoke just as he was going to do so.
"What's your name?"
Denis was startled.
"I beg your pardon—I'm so sorry. Of course, I ought to have introduced myself. My name is Waller. I came with Mrs. Romayne, from the Hôtel d'Azur. I—I happen to be staying there."
She ignored the last part of his speech.
"What else besides Waller?"
"What else?"
"What other name, I mean?"
"Oh. Denis. My full name is Denis Hannaford Waller."
"Mine's Chrissie Challoner."
"Are you——"
In the extremity of his astonishment, Denis faced round at her in the moonlight.
"You're not the—the lady who writes books?"
She nodded, looking oddly like a small child confessing to a misdeed.
"I'd
