tion of having nothing to do but bask in the warm sunshine and
listen to the faint murmur of the little waves.

But, if there was one drawback, she had discovered, to a morning on the
Roville plage, it was that you had a tendency to fall asleep: and this
is a degrading thing to do so soon after breakfast, even if you are on
a holiday. Usually, Sally fought stoutly against the temptation, but
to-day the sun was so warm and the whisper of the waves so insinuating
that she had almost dozed off, when she was aroused by voices close at
hand. There were many voices on the beach, both near and distant, but
these were talking English, a novelty in Roville, and the sound of the
familiar tongue jerked Sally back from the borders of sleep. A few feet
away, two men had seated themselves on the sand.

From the first moment she had set out on her travels, it had been one of
Sally's principal amusements to examine the strangers whom chance threw
in her way and to try by the light of her intuition to fit them out with
characters and occupations: nor had she been discouraged by an almost
consistent failure to guess right. Out of the corner of her eye she
inspected these two men.

The first of the pair did not attract her. He was a tall, dark man whose
tight, precise mouth and rather high cheeks bones gave him an appearance
vaguely sinister. He had the dusky look of the clean-shaven man whose
life is a perpetual struggle with a determined beard. He certainly
shaved twice a day, and just as certainly had the self-control not to
swear when he cut himself. She could picture him smiling nastily when
this happened.

"Hard," diagnosed Sally. "I shouldn't like him. A lawyer or something, I
think."

She turned to the other and found herself looking into his eyes. This
was because he had been staring at Sally with the utmost intentness ever
since his arrival. His mouth had opened slightly. He had the air of a
man who, after many disappointments, has at last found something worth
looking at.

"Rather a dear," decided Sally.

He was a sturdy, thick-set young man with an amiable, freckled face and
the reddest hair Sally had ever seen. He had a square chin, and at one
angle of the chin a slight cut. And Sally was convinced that, however
he had behaved on receipt of that wound, it had not been with superior
self-control.

"A temper, I should think," she meditated. "Very quick, but soon over.
Not very clever, I should say, but nice."

She l