She wheeled abruptly round and stood still.
He was there, not a dozen yards from her. He hailed her as she turned.
She clenched her hands with sudden determination and went to meet him.
"Piers!" she said, and in her voice reproach and severity were
oddly mingled.
But Piers was unabashed. He ran swiftly up to her, and caught her
hands into his with an impetuous rush of words. "Here you are at last!
I've been waiting for you for hours. But I was in the water when you
first appeared, and I hadn't any towels, or I should have caught you
up before."
He was laughing as he spoke, but it seemed to Avery that there was
something not quite normal about him. His black hair lay in a wet plaster
on his forehead, and below it his eyes glittered oddly, as if he were
putting some force upon himself.
"How in the world did you get here?" she said.
He laughed again between his teeth. "I tell you, I've been here for
hours. I came last night. But I couldn't knock you up at two in the
morning. So I had to wait. How are you and Jeanie getting on?"
Avery gravely withdrew her hands, and turned to pursue her way towards
her rocky resting-place. "Jeanie is better," she said, in a voice that
did not encourage any further solicitude on either Jeanie's behalf or
her own.
Piers marched beside her, a certain doggedness in his gait.
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