for their present state of mutual boredom, but took it philosophically for granted. Hilary Moon, who was held to be clever by himself and his friends, was already thinking out the aspect of his marriage that he would present to the next woman with whom he fell in love.
Angie, with even less subtlety, was merely looking carefully at every man within range in the hope of seeing a certain expression, that she knew well, leap into his eyes at the sight of her beauty.
Angie was, indeed, as beautiful as she could well be. To a lovely slimness she added that length of shapely leg that is usually the prerogative of American women. But her sea-blue eyes, her thick fair hair and peach-blossom complexion, were all English.
She had everything: even to eyelashes that curled up and curled down, and a dimple at the corner of her lovely mouth. Several people had already looked at her rather intently, but Angie knew, without stopping to think about it, that all these people were entirely negligible. Either they were women, or servants, or elderly men whom she, at twenty-four, never took into serious consideration at all.
Presently, however, two young men appeared. One of them, indeed, was so young that he might be called a boy—perhaps even a schoolboy. Angie's experienced eye dismissed him, and passed on to his companion. This was a dark, rather thick-set young man of seven-or eight-and-twenty, with brown, bold eyes and remarkably beautiful teeth. There was something faintly unusual in the animation of his face and manner, and the frequency of his smile.
Angie instantly perceived that he had noticed her the moment he came on to the terrace, and that the ease and sprightliness with which he was now talking to his companion was entirely directed towards herself. With a tiny little sigh of relief, she settled back in her chair, relaxing completely.
"What are you going to have?" Hilary asked.
"Orangeade. Iced. Ask if they've got any biscuits."
Hilary gave the order, frowning slightly. His French was better than Angie's, but it was not good, and he disliked doing anything that he did not do well. By a natural transition, his thoughts immediately turned to something that he did do well.
"Shall we go down to bathe, afterwards?"
"Yes. I wish we had a car."
"We might be able to hire one while we're here."
"Oh, could we?"
"I expect so," said Hilary negligently.
There was no reason why the Moons should not hire a car, except that they had no money. They were, however, accustomed to having no money, and they did not allow the lack of it to stand in their way when they wanted cars, or clothes, or drinks, or restaurant meals, or trips to the South of France. They were, of course, in debt, but so were their friends and contemporaries, and still all of them went on spending money that wasn't there, and somehow, miraculously, evading the continually threatening crash.
"There's a garage at the bottom of the drive—quite a big one."
"That's no good. One would have to go to Cannes, or Nice, or somewhere like that, for a decent car," said Hilary. "I'll ask the concierge."
"We might go in to-morrow morning. I want to get some things," Angie said eagerly. "Cannes would be better than St. Raphael for shopping, wouldn't it?"
She had decided, within the last two seconds, that she needed a large straw hat, of shiny red-and-blue straw, and a wide pair of white silk trousers, and one of those triangular coloured handkerchiefs that went over one's head, and tied at the back.
Hilary had decided with equal promptitude that he must get hold of a car somehow—a swift, high-powered car with chromium-plated fittings.
They sipped through straws at the orangeade in their tall glasses, absorbed in these agreeable fancies.
Angie, however, did not cease to be aware of the dark young man at the next table, and presently she saw him half-stand up, as a woman in rose-coloured tussore pyjamas came and sat down between him and his companion.
The sight was faintly disagreeable to Angie, and became more actively so when she discerned that the woman, although not young, was good-looking in very much her own style—fair, and slim, and big-eyed—and with that indefinable air of self-assurance peculiar to a woman who has always been attractive to men. Angie directed Hilary's attention to the next table by a slight movement of the head.
"What do you think they are? Mother and sons?"
"Sons? She's much too young to be the dark one's mother," said Hilary tactlessly. "She might be his wife."
"He couldn't possibly be the boy's father."
"Well—no. Perhaps he's her second husband."
"She wouldn't be making eyes at him like that, if he was."
They gazed at the trio. The boy was silent, and looked faintly bewildered, but the other two were talking and laughing noisily with an air of great intimacy.
"They aren't interesting—particularly," at last said Hilary—meaning that the woman was not the type that attracted him. He looked up and down the terrace and then said, with a shudder:
"My God—children. You'd think English people would have the sense not to bring children to the South of France in August."
Hilary, however, had overrated the sense of his compatriots. They had with them three children, of the fatal ages of eight, ten, and fourteen years old.
It was nothing to Hilary, or to his wife either, that the three children were good-looking, in a clear-cut, distinguished way, with beautifully bronzed skins and heads of golden hair that gleamed in the sun.
The Moons knew that all children were undesirable. They cost money, they interfered with every adult form of enjoyment, they attracted attention that should have been bestowed elsewhere, and they not infrequently gave rise to the type of conversation most disliked by the Moons, since it was neither flippant, suggestive, amorous, nor scandalous.
"I hope to God," said Hilary disconsolately, "that a few amusing people are going to turn up in this hole. Otherwise it won't have been worth coming."
"There are the people in the villa," suggested Angie—but languidly, for she knew that the people in the villa, one of them a friend of a friend of Hilary's, were unescorted women and therefore uninteresting to herself.
"We might look them up after dinner."
"Or before dinner."
"Too obvious, a bit. They'll have to ask us to a meal, anyway, and there's no sense in rushing things."
"Well——"
Angie's eye roved away once more, as a noisy group of French people came up the steps, talking and laughing. The women were young, fat, dark, and wore very smart bathing-dresses and sandals. The men were dark and fat, too, and full of animation. They all looked hard at Angie, and, having passed, looked back again. The impression that she had obviously created pleased her faintly, but the group was too evidently a family one. There was little satisfaction to be got out of the admiration of a middle-class Frenchman taking a holiday with his wife and—probably—sisters-in-law.
Angie's
