“Ah—you see I came over on the pony. Doesn’t look very promising weather.” And he looked away across the sea, averting his face.
“No—and the terrible cold winds! I’m so glad if it will rain. I simply love the smell of rain in the air: especially here in Australia. It makes the air seem so much kinder, not so dry and savage—”
“Ah—yes—it does,” he said vaguely, still averting his face from her. He seemed strange to her. And his face looked different—as if he had been drinking, or as if he had indigestion.
The two men were aloof like two strange tom-cats.
“Were you disgusted with Lovat when he didn’t turn up the other Saturday?” said Harriet. “I do hope you weren’t sitting waiting for him.”
“Well—er—yes, we did wait up a while for him.”
“Oh, but what a shame! But you know by now he’s the most undependable creature on earth. I wish you’d be angry with him. It’s no good what I say.”
“No,” said he—the peculiar slow Cockney no—“I’m not angry with him.”
“But you should be,” cried Harriet. “It would be good for him.”
“Would it?” smiled Jack. His eyes were dark and inchoate, and there seemed a devil in his long, wiry body. He did not look at Somers.