withered. She was the only woman at the Bay who smoked, and she smoked
incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her lips while she talked, and
only taking it out when the ash was so long you could not understand why it
did not fall. When she was not playing bridge--she played bridge every day
of her life--she spent her time lying in the full glare of the sun. She
could stand any amount of it; she never had enough. All the same, it did
not seem to warm her. Parched, withered, cold, she lay stretched on the
stones like a piece of tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought
she was very, very fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she
treated men as though she was one of them, and the fact that she didn't
care twopence about her house and called the servant Gladys "Glad-eyes,"
was disgraceful. Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in
her indifferent, tired voice, "I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a
handkerchief if I've got one, will you?" And Glad-eyes, a red bow in her
hair instead of a cap, and white shoes, came running with an impudent
smile. It was an absolute scandal! True, she had no children, and her
husband...Here the voices were always raised; they became fervent. How can
he have married her? How can he, how can he? It must have been money, of
course, but even then!

Mrs. Kember's husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and so
incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect
illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair, dark blue
eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a perfect
dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man walking in
his sleep. Men couldn't stand him, they couldn't get a word out of the
chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did he live? Of
course there were stories, but such stories! They simply couldn't be told.
The women he'd been seen with, the places he'd been seen in...but nothing
was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the women at the Bay privately