d. With the strange inconsistency of the narrow, her
relatives, who had almost tabooed society, permitted her to indulge her
taste for swimming, a sport in which she excelled. This laxity probably
owed its origin to routine cultivated in the girl's childhood, and
retained--as were all the observances of Madame's distinguished
household--still intact and unchallenged.

At St Malo, as the tide ebbed, all the delightfully _insouciant_ and
cheery French world congregated. The sands near the giant rock that
marks the ideal resting-place of Chateaubriand were dotted with tents--a
perfect army of mushrooms--which served as disrobing shelters for the
bathers. From these emerged a brilliant throng of masqueraders of both
sexes, who tripped to the tide with varying degrees of elegant
assurance. As Leonie's lithe figure, with its natty tunic and cherry
waist-band, slipped from the tent (Valentine for the moment was
arranging the shed raiment) a gamin with bare limbs and furled shrimping
net lurched up against her. There was unusual audacity in the eye of the
youngster, but the disrespect was forgiven when a missive, crunched in
his plump palm, was transferred to hers.

She clasped her hands, drew a long breath of rapturous surprise, and
devoutly whispered:--

"_Que Dieu soit beni!_"

The Catholic and Breton temperament is so finely interwoven that even
this sudden overstepping of family restrictions had to her its pious
side. She could there and then, in effervescent thankfulness, have knelt
to worship all the infinitesimal saintlings of whom her lover had never
heard, but who, with her, were active pioneers to mercy. Besides this,
love, which, when real, touches the religious string in every breast,
had so long played an accompaniment to prayer and worship, that her
first action was almost mechanically devotional. Her second, in
contrast, was crudely mundane. Valentine, complacency beaming from her
triple chins, loomed expansively in the doorway of the tent, so Leonie,
slipping the billet in her mouth, sped for protection to the ocean, the
only haven where she could be free from company and espionage.

She battled against the waves till she neared the protective raft in
deep water where timorous bathers never ventured. Then she hoisted
herself up, took the scrap of paper from its hiding place, and re-read
it, crossing herself devoutly and crying with childish exultation:--

"Oh sea, beloved sea, you have brought him to me a