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‘Oh, Gray, you might have died.’

‘I nearly did. Pity, wasn’t it, that I survived? It would have been so convenient for all concerned if
I’d kicked the bucket.'

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Samantha wailed. ‘My heart would have been broken.’

‘You haven’t got one.’ He stood up and looked her up and down scathingly. 'You only wanted me when I was on top of the world. When you thought I might be crippled you fled. I suppose you’ve come after me because you imagine I’ll again be a glamorous racing pilot, but it’s no go. Sam. All that’s over. Graham Crawford, speed ace, died when Silver Arrow was destroyed. I’m grateful for all your father did for me, but I think he owed it to me. As for you and your louse of a brother, I’ve no use for you whatever. Nor would I ever want to live in your country. Scotland’s my home and here I shall bide. Now get out!'

Samantha drew herself up like a snake about to strike. All trace of prettiness had vanished, she was all teeth, staring eyes and spitting venom.

'I'll make you pay for this, Gray Crawford, you see if I don’t!’

‘I think,’ he said more gently, ‘I have already paid.’

Caesar, sensing the menace in Samantha, gave a growl, and Gray put his hand on the dog’s collar.

‘My sentiments exactly,’ he smiled wryly. ‘Come off it, Sam, there’s better fish in the sea waiting to be hooked. You’ll soon forget me.’

‘That I can’t,’ she retorted, the fury dying out of her face. She looked almost sad. ‘You may be a swine, Gray Crawford, and you’ve only contempt for women, but no girl who has loved you could ever forget you.’

With which parting shot, she flounced out of the room.

‘Unfortunately Sam Lambert doesn’t know what love is,' Gray said to no one in particular.

‘No more do you,' Frances told him bitterly, for in his darkest hour he had not turned to her but had shut her out.

‘Of course you're the expert,' he returned sarcastically. 'Sorry about that scene—I'd no idea she'd follow me here. Some women can't take no for an answer.'

‘Since you are here, do sit down and let me get you a drink,' Lesley invited him. ‘I'm glad she came, because now I'm in the picture. So dear Brett put a time-bomb in your boat so she couldn't compete, and got you too by mistake. Quite enough to drive you round the bend, but I'd like to hear more about your time in hospital.'

‘I daresay you would,' he returned coolly, ‘but I've no intention of satisfying your curiosity. That too is finished.' He turned to Frances apologetically. ‘Forgive me for intruding upon you, and I won't stay, because I know you don't want to see me. I called expecting to see only Murdoch, as I intended to take Caesar for. a walk.' His face softened as he stroked the dog's head. ‘My faithful hound,' he murmured. ‘You don’t change.' He looked at Frances again and his eyes were ice. ‘When Murdoch said Sam was here I thought I'd better come in and put the record straight.'

'I'm glad you did,' Frances said equally coldly. ‘But how did you know the dog was here: ’

‘My mother told me, and also that Ian Ferguson was a frequent visitor.' Lesley uttered an exclamation and Frances thought despairingly how gossip could distort the most innocent happening. Ian had called once, and must have been seen by some busybody who had exaggerated. Gray went on:

‘I suppose he comes expecting you to condole with him about leaving Crawfords, but I didn't fire him, he fired himself.'

‘So he told me,’ said Frances, and could have bitten her tongue out, for that admission would seem to confirm that he called often. Gray gave her a veiled look, and told her:

‘I’m very grateful to you for taking care of Caesar. I should have been very distressed if he’d been destroyed.’

‘I couldn’t let that happen,’ Frances assured him quickly. ‘I love him too.’ She hesitated. ‘Will you bring him back?’

‘If I may. Otherwise, as I’m living in a hotel, it would have to be kennels, which he’d hate.’

‘He’s more than welcome here.’

‘More than I am.’ Gray’s smile was twisted.

‘Oh, Gray!’ Frances with difficulty restrained a rush of tears. Gray’s concern for his dog had touched her in spite of herself, but he had to go and spoil it with an unfair dig at her.

‘Why do you say everything you can to make me hate you?' she asked despairingly.

‘Do I?’ He looked mildly interested. ‘It isn’t intentional.’

He hesitated as if considering what to say next, and Lesley broke in eagerly:

‘Gray
_?
since you’re here . . .’

He interrupted her quickly as if he knew what she was about to say.

‘I mustn’t stay. It’s getting late and it’ll be very late when I bring Caesar back. Pm sure Murdoch won’t mind waiting up to let the hound in, so I need not disturb you.’ He smiled, his old charming smile, as he looked at Frances, and her heart seemed to melt. ‘I see you took pity on him too, Fran. The poor old chap nearly wept on my shoulder when he opened the door to me.’ He paused, seemed to consider, and Lesley looked at him appealingly, while Frances’ eyes were wistful, but all he said was:

‘Have you got Caesar’s lead?’

‘It’s hanging up in the lobby.’ Frances moved towards the door, anxious to conceal her emotion. For a moment Gray had looked so like he used to do that she had to restrain an impulse to throw herself into his arms. That such a thought was far from his mind was only too obvious.

‘Don’t bother, I’ll find it.’ He opened the door, but turned back again, his hand on the knob. ‘I’ll be making some financial arrangement for you, Fran, but Sandy will act as my intermediary, so you won’t be troubled by my obnoxious presence. Goodnight, ladies.’

He went out followed by Caesar, closing the door behind him.

Lesley exclaimed indignantly:

‘He isn’t human! All that concern for Caesar and he never asked about Robbie, let alone wanted to see him. Isn’t a child more important than a dog?'

‘The dog’s his, and he still isn’t sure about Robbie!’ Frances said bitterly.
‘You can be certain his mother’s put him right about that,’ Lesley declared emphatically. ‘You’ve only to look at the bairn . .

‘Which Gray very obviously doesn’t want to do.'

Before Samantha’s coming, she would have ascribed his reluctance to his desire for a divorce. Robbie could only complicate proceedings, but she had been quite wrong about that. Yet she felt no elation at Sam’s discomfiture. The barrier between her and her husband seemed to remain impenetrable. Ian still stood between them. She sighed.

‘Someone’s reported that Ian came to see me . . . with embellishments.’

‘So what? You’re not in purdah.'
Lesley
sat down again by the fire and seemed to be ruminating. 'I’m glad to know the truth about Silver Arrow at last,’ she said, ‘but Gray’s attitude is inexplicable.’ She looked at Frances half shyly. ‘He puts me in mind of the fairy story about the Snow Queen . .. you read it as a child, of course?’ Frances nodded. ‘Splinters from the goblin’s evil mirror entered Kay’s heart and eye. The former became devoid of feeling, the vision of the latter was distorted, so all that was fair seemed foul. One could imagine that fragments from the bomb which destroyed Silver Arrow had the same effect upon Gray.’

‘A bit far-fetched.’ Frances was surprised that the practical Lesley should harbour such a whimsical notion.

Lesley looked at her meaningly. ‘Kay was restored by the devotion of little Gerda. It was her tears which melted the splinter in Kay’s heart and caused the other to fall from his eye. I believe that if
you tried . . .’

Frances had suspected whither Lesley’s fantasy was leading, and her face hardened.

‘No, I’m not going to crawl to him and be spurned,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve taken as much as I can stand from him.’

Desire had flared up in him during that painful scene in the office, but now even that seemed to have died.

‘Since you’ve fallen in love yourself you want every story to have a happy ending,’ she went on, lifting her head defiantly. ‘Mine will too, because I’ve got Robbie and I’ll make a new life with him. I'm relieved Gray isn’t interested in him, it means no one will dispute my sole claim to him.’

‘But as Sam said, no girl who has loved Gray can ever forget him,’ Lesley protested. ‘I’ll always have a special feeling for him myself, though I was never in the running.’

'Oh, I shan't forget him entirely,’ Frances strove to speak lightly. ‘He made too deep an impression for that to be possible.’ In spite of her brave front her eyes filled with tears and she looked away hastily, hoping Lesley had not noticed. Craig Dhu, the lochan in the hills, the rhododendrons and the waterlilies, and the white sands of Morar, were all enshrined in her heart, memories to be recalled during the years ahead when they had lost their pain but never their poignancy.

‘You'd better go to bed,’ she resumed. ‘Murdoch will wait up for Caesar and you have to be up in good time to go to work.’

Lesley stood up, smoothing down her skirt.

‘Doug doesn’t want me to go on working after we’re married,' she announced, ‘and I shan’t be sorry to give up. Dealing out spares and invoicing stock isn’t like the fan it was at Craig Dhu, servicing Silver Arrow and the other boats. I’m nothing more than a clerk nowadays.’

Both became silent, seeing in retrospect the sunlit loch and the passage of the arrow-swift speedboat, and its owner, lighthearted and debonair, so confident of its success.

Lesley gave a long sigh.

'You coming? Not going to sit brooding here?’

‘No. I’ll be coming when I’ve spoken to Murdoch. Goodnight, Les.’

Lesley put her arm round her friend’s shoulder and kissed her, which was a rare occurrence with her, as she was not demonstrative.

‘We’ve come a long way since I pushed you into the loch,' she said with a wry smile. ‘I’ve learned to appreciate you, Fran, if Gray hasn’t. I’ll tell you something—Doug’s all right, but if he went off into the blue for over a year, he wouldn’t find me waiting for him. But the saints of this world are never recognised until after they’re dead. Goodnight, Fran.’

Frances
went into her own room and roused the sleeping Robbie to change him. He made no demur about this necessary proceeding, sinking back into sleep as soon as she returned him to his cot, contentedly sucking his thumb.

Frances sat down upon her bed and involuntarily her thoughts turned to Gray. Picture after picture filtered through her mind—Gray putting on her sandals at Morar, recalling her to life after she had been half drowned in the loch, teaching her to swim, the sunlight on his hair and his splendid bronzed body, Gray proposing to her in the boat, suggesting a marriage of convenience, that was, however, to be consummated. The nights at the inn, Gray dancing the sword dance, and his departure in the misty grey morning exhilarated by the prospect of success.

‘I'll crown you with my laurels.'

Always he had been a dominant vital figure, bending her to his will. Samantha’s visit had been a revelation, dimly she began to perceive why he had not wanted her to come to him. His masculine pride could not bear that she should see him defeated and disfigured, he who had been to her like a pagan god, Jupiter falling upon Danae in a shower of gold, Apollo the invincible. She would not have shrunk from him whatever he had looked like, but he would have hated to see pity in her eyes. Only if he had truly loved her could he have accepted her sympathy, turned to her for solace, but he had never loved her, never perjured himself to the extent of saying that he did, as many men would in the throes of desire, nor had he asked her for love, demanding only reciprocation and loyalty. If they had not been parted, he might have come to love her as well as desiring her body, and that had been her great hope, but fate decreed otherwise.

He
had
been coming back to her, and unluckily had surprised her with Ian. Already embittered by his experiences, distrustful of his so-called friends, he had immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion. Their courtship and marriage had been so brief he could all too easily believe that she had found consolation with a man for whom he had always suspected she had a softness. As for his assault upon her, that had been prompted by an urge to reassert his mastery over her, a bitter revenge for her apparent infidelity. Now he appeared to have accepted the situation as he imagined it to be. Her outburst when she had declared that she never wanted to see him again had convinced him that she would never forgive the outrage he had sought to inflict upon her.

Lesley was right—she did still love him, always would, however cruelly and indifferently he treated her. There was something about him that made it impossible for a woman to forget him. And there was Robbie. Gray would know now that the child must be his, but he had not asked about him or wanted to see him. Perhaps he felt that it was better to ignore him if they were going to part. Part? Her heart contracted, Could she bear to be legally parted from Gray, slight though her hold upon him was?

She had told Lesley that she would not crawl to him, but it was the woman’s role to be generous and forgiving, and she was the one who loved. Would it not be worth while to make a further effort to arrive at a better understanding, now she knew that Samantha did not stand between them?

He would be bringing the dog back, expecting Murdoch to let him in. She wondered where they had gone. Probably he had driven out to some open space where Caesar could run. She went to look out of the window. It was a fine starry night, though cold, and white hoar-frost lay over the roofs. That would not deter them, but both would be chilled by the time they returned. Frances came to a decision. She would send Murdoch to bed, and open the door to them herself, invite Gray to come in and offer him a chance to warm himself and some refreshment.

Excited by the prospect, she went into the sitting room and made up the fire. From a cupboard she took out glasses and the whisky they kept for chance visitors. Then she went to find Murdoch, who was sitting over the stove in the kitchen.

The old man looked at her eagerly.