I know both were strongly
mingled and for a few minutes it never even occurred to me to question
whether the man really was within sight of a solution. And then I began
to wonder.
Who was this mysterious person who had not lived all "their" life on the
island? He had concealed, probably deliberately, "their" sex. And was it
then a fact of which I myself was unaware? Bolton said he had found it
out. But it might be no news to me. I thought of several people, a woman
and at least two men, who had certainly lived a considerable part of
their lives out of the island. But there was no use speculating with the
test so near at hand.
All the same I felt so restless that I should have gone out to walk it
off there and then had it not been for the fear that I might chance to
follow in Bolton's tracks and lead him to think I was doing it
deliberately. At all costs I wanted him to see that I was playing the
game (as I was playing it), so I waited till after our early dinner and
then set off.
I well remember the day, a nasty raw specimen of March weather, not
exactly raining, but trying to all the time, and altogether grey and
dismal. The spring ploughing was proceeding apace, and as the fields grew
brown, there was less and less trace of colour left in the landscape. In
fact it was a day when something evil could scarcely help happening; or
at least it seems so looking back.
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