and found someone there seemingly in fancy dress, in "a kind of Harlequin rig". Satterthwaite is surprised at this mention of his old friend and tells his new acquaintance that Mr Quin's appearances usually presage revelations and discoveries. The younger man comments that his appearance seemed very sudden, as if he came from the sea. Anthony Cosden introduces himself and tells Satterthwaite of his life; he has been told that he has six months to live. He visited the island about twenty years before, and makes clear he wants to die here by leaping off the cliff. Satterthwaite asks, "You will not do it tonight, to spare me suspicion of pushing you?" Cosden agrees. Satterthwaite makes the case for living, but Cosden is resolute. Cosden leaves and Satterthwaite approaches the villa. Pulling open one of the closed shutters, he sees a troubled woman in traditional Spanish dress looking at him. He stammers an apology which makes the woman realise that he is English, and she calls him back. She, too, is English, and she invites him into the house for tea as she wishes to talk to someone. She unburdens herself to Satterthwaite, telling him that she has lived here for the last twenty-three years, for all but the first year as a widow. She married an Englishman when she was eighteen and they moved into the villa. The marriage proved to be a dreadful mistake as her husband gloried in making her miserable, and their baby was stillborn. Some girls staying in the local hotel dared him to swim in the dangerous sea at the base of the cliff. He drowned and his body was battered against the rocks as his wife watched. Soon afterwards, she had a brief affair with a young Englishman who was visiting the island, the result of which was a son. He is now grown up and happy. He is serious about a girl whose parents want to know his antecedents, and she has never told him he is illegitimate. To save him pain and scandal, she is planning to commit suicide to hide the truth from him forever. Again, Satterthwaite finds himself persuading someone to live. He asks her to take no action for twenty-four hours, but to leave the shutter he opened unlatched and to wait there tonight. He returns to the hotel, finds Cosden, and refers obliquely to the shutter on