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Angela to him. But she was almost certain that she had not, so how could he possibly have known?
    A young West Indian chambermaid came to call them. As well as tea and biscuits, there was a bowl of oranges, already peeled and divided, the juicy segments arranged on a bed of green leaves.
    Sara had thanked the maid and was pouring the tea, when Angela stirred and woke.
    “Mm, this is certainly life!” she said with luxurist satisfaction as, pillows heaped behind her, she nibbled a sugary shortbread.
    “I’ve been out for a swim,” said Sara.
    “Good heavens—at this hour? But you were always rather a Spartan.”
    “The water was almost tepid.”
    “All the same, I think I’ll keep my swim-suit dry. The best of caps always seem to leak, and salt water plays hell with one’s hair,” Angela said firmly. She could swim well enough to save herself from drowning, but she had never shared Sara’s love of bathing and preferred to ornament the beach.
    They were the first to arrive on the terrace and had almost finished breakfast before anyone else appeared.
    “What shall we do this morning? Look round the shops?” Angela suggested, as they lingered over their coffee.
    “All right.”
    “What time are we going to this yacht?”
    “Oh, about noon. I think I’ll wear pants and a shirt. It won’t be at all formal.”
    So they spent the morning investigating the shops, the open-air straw market having more appeal for Sara than the fashionable boutiques along Bay Street. Clothes, mostly British-made, were far more expensive than in London, but there were a great many specialist scent shops and the prices on the pretty crystal flasks were much lower than at home. Angela bought herself a flask of Bahamour, which the salesgirl said had been specially created for the islands. Then, further along the street, she discovered that real tortoise-shell was also quite inexpensive, and bought a matching cigarette case and holder.
    Sara was content with a shady sombrero from the bustling Rawson Square market which saved her wearing sun-glasses.
    The Pillbakers’ yacht was anchored off Love Beach on the north-west side of the island, and Conrad drove them over in a hired Cadillac coupe. Angela sat beside him, and Sara shared the back seat with Mrs. Stuyvesant, now in a girlish beach-dress and jangling charm bracelets.
    A West Indian lad was waiting to take them out to the yacht by dinghy, and as they neared the imposing craft they could hear laughter and squeals and splashing coming from the seaward side of the boat. It sounded as if about twenty people were having a boisterous water-game, and Sara thought wistfully of the quiet reef-roving trip which she had to forgo for this.
    However, it appeared that most of the visitors had been paying a cocktail call and were now on the point of departure so that, eventually, there were only five people left under the gaily striped awning. There was stout, jovial Mr. Pillbaker in a Palm Beach shirt and yachting cap, tiny kittenish Mrs. Pillbaker, their husky blue-eyed son, Joe and the girl who had been responsible for most of the squeals, a pretty vivacious teenager called Dolores. And there was also a man named Peter Laszlo, who had the physique of a Greek discus-thrower but a cynical and dissipated face, whose presence was unexplained. He had a slight mid-European accent, and Sara noticed that although, throughout luncheon, he was charmingly attentive to all the other women, he never once spoke to Angela.
    In spite of Angela’s prediction, Joe Pillbaker was no more interested in Sara than she in him. About four o’clock, when the party showed no signs of breaking up, and she thought no one was likely to miss her for a while, Sara swam off by herself. It was only about sixty yards to the beach and she sat in the limpid shallows, her arms round her updrawn legs. The wind had dropped for a time and the sea was glassy still. In the lee of the yacht the water looked almost violet.
    Sara had closed