under smoke-stained skies. We know what it is to smell the salt wind,
to hear it whistling in the cords and the sails of our boats, to feel
the warmth of the sun, to listen to the song of the birds, to watch the
colouring of God's land here. I suppose we have the thing in our
bloods; we can't leave it. We hear the call of the other things
sometimes, but as soon as we obey we are restless and unhappy. It is
only an affair of time, and generally a very short time. One cannot
fight against nature."

"No!" she answered softly. "One cannot fight against nature. But there
are children of the cities, children of the life artificial as well as
children of nature. Look at me!"

He turned toward her quickly.

"Look at me!" she commanded, and he obeyed.

He saw her pale skin, which the touch of the sun seemed to have no
power to burn or coarsen. The clear, wonderful eyes, the delicate
eyebrows, the masses of dark hair, the scarlet lips. He saw her white
throat swelling underneath her muslin blouse. The daintiness of her
gown, airy and simple, yet fresh from a Paris workshop. The stockings
and shoes, exquisite, but strangely out of place with their high heels
buried in the sand.

"How do I know," she demanded, "that I am not one of the children of
the cities, that I was not fashioned and made for the gas-lit life, to
eat unreal food at unreal hours, and feed my brain upon the unreal
epigrams of the men whom you would call decadents. Two days here, a
week--very well. In a month I might be bored. Who shall guarantee me
against it?"

"No one," he answered. "And yet there is something in your blood which
calls for the truth, which hates the shams, which knows real beauty.
Why don't you try and cultivate it? In your heart you know where the
true things lie. Consider! Every one with great wealth can make or mar
many lives. You enter the world almost as a divinity. Your wealth is
reckoned as a quality. What you do will be right. What you condemn will
be wrong. It is a very important thing for others as well as yourself,
that you should see a clear way through life."

A moment's intense dejection seized upon her. The tears stood in her
eyes as she looked away from him.

"Who is there to show it me?" she asked. "Who is there to help me find
it?"

"Not those friends whom you have left to play bridge in a room with
drawn curtains at this hour of the day," he answered. "Not your
stepmother, or any of her sort. Try and realize this.