lness."

"I am not at all sure that you have known me long enough to tell me what
colours suit me," she demurred.

"Then what will you say," he enquired, "if I admire the angle of that
quill in your hat?"

"Don't do it," she laughed. "If you continue like this, I may have to go
home."

"You have sent the car away," he reminded her cheerfully. "You would
simply have to sit upon the balcony and reflect upon your wasted
morning."

"I decline to talk upon the putting green," she said. "It puts me off.
If you will stand perfectly quiet and say nothing, I will play the
like."

They moved off presently to the next teeing ground.

"I don't believe this nonsense is good for our golf," she said.

"It is immensely good for us as human beings," he protested.

They had played the ninth hole and turned for home. On their right now
was a shimmering stretch of wet sand and a thin line of sea, in the
distance. The tide, receding, had left little islands of virgin sand,
grass tufted, the home of countless sea-gulls. A brown-sailed fishing
boat was racing for the narrow entrance to the tidal way.

"I am beginning to understand what there is about this coast which
fascinated my father so," he remarked.

"Are you?" she answered gravely. "Years ago I used to love it, but not
now."

He tried to change the subject, but the gloom had settled upon her face
once more.

"You don't know what it is like," she went on, as they walked side by
side after their balls, "to live day and night in fear, with no one to
talk to--no one, that is to say, who is not under the same shadow. Even
the voices of the wind and the sea, and the screaming of the birds, seem
to bring always an evil message. There is nothing kindly or hopeful even
in the sunshine. At night, when the tide comes thundering in as it does
so often at this time of the year, one is afraid. There is so much to
make one afraid!"

She had turned pale again, notwithstanding the sunshine and the
freshening wind. He laid his hand lightly upon her arm. She suffered his
touch without appearing to notice it.

"Ah, you mustn't talk like that!" he pleaded. "Do you know what you make
me feel like?"

She came back from the world of her own unhappy imaginings.

"Really, I forgot myself," she declared, with a little smile. "Never
mind, it does one good sometimes. One up, are you? Henceforth, then,
golf--all the rigour of the game, mind."

He fell in with her mood, and their conversatio