ve to convince
Ruth yet, but, by Jove! you've convinced me! Glad you had Arthur for
ally. They don't make kiddies any better. God! if I could have a son
like that----I turn off here. G-good luck, Ericson."

"Thanks a lot, Phil."

"Thanks. Good night, Carl."

CHAPTER XXXVII

Long Beach, on the first hot Sunday of May, when motorists come out
from New York, half-ready to open asphalt hearts to sea and sky.
Carl's first sight of it, save from an aeroplane, and he was mad-happy
to find real shore so near the city.

Ruth and he were picnicking, vulgar and unashamed, among the dunes at
the end of the long board-walk, like the beer-drinking, pickle-eating
parties of fishermen and the family groups with red table-cloths,
grape-basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared
that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off
new motor-coats on the board-walk. But Carl and she had withdrawn a
bit from the crowds, and in the dunes had made a nest, with a book and
a magazine and a box of chocolates and Carl's collapsible lunch-kit.

Not New York only, but all of Ruth's relatives were forgot. Aunt Emma
Truegate Winslow was a myth of the dragon-haunted past. Here all was
fresh color and free spaces looking to open sea. Behind the dunes,
with their traceries of pale grass, reveled the sharp, unshadowed
green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing, a
startling blue, bordered by the emerald marshes. To one side--afar,
not troubling their peace--were the crimson roofs of fantastic houses,
like chalets and California missions and villas of the Riviera, with
gables and turrets of red tiles.

Before their feet was the cream-colored beach, marked by ridges of
driftwood mixed with small glistening shells, long ranks of
pale-yellow seaweed, and the delicate wrinkles in the sand that were
the tracks of receding waves. The breakers left the beach wet and
shining for a moment, like plates of raw-colored copper, making one
cry out with its flashing beauty. Then, at last, the eyes lifted to
unbroken bluewater--nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves
and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue
that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a
rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The
sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall
surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boot