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seems.
    Nicholas, let me introduce you to Miss Marcia Maling—
    the Marcia Maling, of course. Marcia, this is Nicholas
    Drury." „
    "The Nicholas Drury?" Marcia cooed it in her- deepest, furriest voice, as she turned the charm full on to him with something of the effect that, we are told, a cosmic ray gun has when turned on to an earthly body.
    But Nicholas showed no sign of immediate disintegration. He merely looked ever so slightly wary as he murmured something conventional. He had seen that amused look of Marcia's, too, I knew. He had always been as quick as a cat. Then Hartley Corrigan came in with some remark to Marcia, and, in less time than it takes to write it, the whole party was talking about fish. The men were, at any rate; Marcia was watching Hartley Corrigan, Alma Corrigan watched Marcia, and I found myself studying Nicholas.
    He had changed, in four years. He would be thirty-six now, I thought, and he looked older. His kind of dark, saturnine good looks did not alter much, but he was thinner, and, though he seemed fit enough, there was tension in the way he held his shoulders, and some sort of strain about his eyes, as if the skin over his cheekbones was drawn too tightly back into the scalp. I found myself wondering what was on his mind. It couldn't just be the strain of starting a new book, though some stages, I knew, were hell. No, knowing him as I did, I knew that it must be something else, some other obscure stress that I couldn't guess at, but which was unmistakably there. Well, at any rate, I thought, this time I couldn't possibly be the cause of his mood; and neither, this time, did I have to worry about it.
    I was just busily congratulating myself that I didn't have to care any more, when the gong sounded, and we all went in to dinner.

Chapter 4
    IT BECAME MORE THAN EVER OBVIOUS, after dinner, that the awkwardness of my own situation was by no means the only tension in the oddly assorted gathering at the Camasunary Hotel. I had not been overimaginative. That there were emotional undercurrents here seemed more than ever apparent, but I don't think I realized, at first, quite how strong they were. I certainly never imagined they might be dangerous.
    By the time I got back into the lounge after dinner, the groups of people had broken and re-formed, and, as is the way in small country hotels, conversation had become general. I saw with a little twinge of wry amusement that Marcia Maling had deserted the Corrigans and was sitting beside Nicholas. It was, I supposed, a change for the better. She could no more help being pulled into the orbit of the nearest interesting man than she could help breathing, but I wished she would leave Hartley Corrigan alone. She had much better spend her time on Nicholas; he could look after himself.
    Alastair found a chair for me in a corner, then excused himself and went off to see about weighing and dispatching the salmon he had caught that day. I saw Corrigan get up, without a word to his wife, and follow him from the room. Alma Corrigan sat without looking up, stirring and stirring her coffee.
    "Will you have coffee? Black or white?"
    I looked up to meet the bright gaze of the younger of the two teachers, who was standing in front of me with a cup in either hand. She had changed into a frock the color of dry sherry, with a cairngorm brooch in the lapel. It was a sophisticated color, and should not have suited her, but somehow it did; it was as if a charming child had dressed up in her elder sister's clothes. She looked younger than ever, and touchingly vulnerable.
    I said: "Black, please. Thank you very much. But why should you wait on me?"
    She handed me a cup. "Oh, nobody serves the coffee.
    They bring it all in on a huge tray, and we each get our own. You've just come, haven't you?"
    "Just before dinner." I indicated the chair at my elbow. "Won't you sit down? I've been deserted for a fish."
    She hesitated, and I saw her shoot a glance across the room to where her