n the walk and made seawards. He saw nothing of the
lady of the motor-boat.

In fact, for some time he saw nothing in human guise; from other
indications he was inclined to conclude that the bathing station was
either closed for the season or else had been permanently abandoned
within a year or so. There was a notable absence of rowboats and sailing
craft about the dock, with, as he drew nearer to the shuttered and
desolate cluster of bath-houses, an equally remarkable lack of garments
and towels hanging out to dry.

Walking rapidly, he wasn't long in covering the distance from shore to
shore. Very soon he stood at the head of a rude flight of wooden steps
which ran down from the top of a wave-eaten sand bluff, some ten or
twelve feet in height, to the broad and gently shelving ocean beach.
Whipping in from the sea, a brisk breeze, from which the dunes had
heretofore sheltered him, now cooled his dripping bathing-suit not
altogether pleasantly. But he didn't mind. The sight of the surf
compensated.

He had long since been aware of its resonant diapason, betokening a
heavy sea; but the spectacle of it was one ever beautiful in his sight.
Whitecaps broke the lustrous blue, clear to its serrated horizon.
Inshore the tide was low; the broad and glistening expanse of naked wet
sand mirrored the tender blueness of the skies far out to where the
breakers weltered in confusion of sapphire, emerald and snow. A mile
offshore a fishing smack with a close-reefed, purple patch of sail was
making heavy weather of it; miles beyond it, again, an inward-bound
ocean steamship shouldered along contemptuously; and a little way
eastwards a multitude of gulls with flashing pinions were wheeling and
darting and screaming above something in the sea--presumably a school of
fish.

Midway between the sand bluff and the breaking waters stood the woman
Whitaker had followed. (There wasn't any use mincing terms: he _had_
followed her in his confounded, fatuous curiosity!) Her face was to the
sea, her hands clasped behind her. Now the wind modelled her cloak
sweetly to her body, now whipped its skirts away, disclosing legs
straight and slender and graciously modelled. She was dressed, it
seemed, for bathing; she had crossed the bay for a lonely bout with the
surf, and having found it dangerously heavy, now lingered, disappointed
but fascinated by the majestic beauty of its fury.

Whitaker turned to go, his inquisitiveness appeased; but he was a