related the terrible episode to her guest, who had wilfully
risen at once. Miss Nickall had had luck, but Audrey had to admit that
these American girls were stupendously equal to an emergency. And she hated
the angelic Nick for having found Musa.

"We tried first to find a cafe," said Nick. "But there aren't any in this
city. What do you call them in England--public-houses, isn't it?"

"No," agreed Mr. Spatt in a shaking voice. "Public-houses are not permitted
in Frinton, I am glad to say." And he began to form an intention, subject
to Aurora's approval, to withdraw altogether from the suffrage movement,
which appeared to him to be getting out of hand.

As they were all separating for the night Audrey and Nick hesitated for a
moment in front of each other, and then they kissed with a quite unusual
effusiveness.

"I don't think I've ever really liked her," said Audrey to herself.

What Nick said to herself is lost to history.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE GARDEN

The next morning, after a night spent chiefly in thought, Audrey issued
forth rather early. Indeed she was probably the first person afoot in the
house of the Spatts, the parlour-maid entering the hall just as Audrey had
managed to open the front door. As the parlour-maid was obviously not yet
in that fullness and spruceness of attire which parlour-maids affect when
performing their mission in life, Audrey decided to offer no remark,
explanatory or otherwise, and passed into the garden with nonchalance as
though her invariable habit when staying in strange houses was to get up
before anybody else and spy out the whole property while the helpless hosts
were yet in bed and asleep.

Now it was a magnificent morning: no wind, no cloud, and the sun rising
over the sea; not a trace of the previous evening's weather. Audrey had not
been in the leafy street more than a moment when she forgot that she was
tired and short of sleep, and also very worried by affairs both private and
public. Her body responded to the sun, and her mind also. She felt almost
magically healthy, strong and mettlesome, and, further, she began to feel
happy; she rather blamed herself for this tendency to feel happy, calling
herself heedless and indifferent. She did not understand what it is to be
young. She had risen partly because of the futility of bed, but more
because of a desire to inspect again her own part of the world after the
unprecedented absence from it.

Frinton was within t