Above his head the battleship
sailed on its green field.

He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something
dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was gone.

There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She
wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago gave
in and let her go.

* * * * *

She knew it by heart now, the long, narrow coffee-room of the hotel. The
draped chimney piece and little oblong gilt-framed mirror at one end; at
the other the bowed window looking west on to the ash-tree and the
fields; the two straight windows between, looking south on to the street.

To-night the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth. The
family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd pouter-pigeons
swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried daughters, sulking; one
married one, pink and proper, and the son-in-law, sharp eyed and
bald-headed. From their table in the centre they stared at her where she
dined by herself at her table in the bow.

Two days. She didn't think she could bear it one day more.

She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk sport's
coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed hair
hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's heads
turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected.

Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece. Gwinnie could
come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer,
not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter
from Gibson, repeating himself.

The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces
straining furtively. If they knew--if they only knew. She stood, reading.

She heard the door shut. She could look in the glass now and amuse
herself by the sight they had stared at. The white face raised on the
strong neck and shoulders. Soft white nose, too thick at the nuzzling
tip. Brown eyes straight and wide open. Deep-grooved, clear-cut eyelids,
heavy lashes. Mouth--clear-cut arches, moulded corners, brooding. Her
eyes and her mouth. She could see they were strange. She could see they
were beautiful.

And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had
been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew.

She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated
secrecy and mys