erpetual guest. I feel as if I were taking
advantage of your hospitality."

"We shouldn't ask you if we didn't want you."

"Then I'll come."

They walked up the beach together. Becky was muffled in her red cape,
Cope had a sweater under his coat. The air was sharp and clear as
crystal.

"How anybody can go in bathing in this weather," Becky shivered, as a
woman ran down the sands towards the sea. She east off her bathing
cloak and stood revealed, slim and rather startling, in yellow.

"She goes in every day," said Cope, "even when it storms."

"Who is she?"

"A dancer--from New York. Haven't you seen her before?"

"No. Where is she staying?"

"At the hotel."

"I thought the hotel was closed."

"Not for three weeks. There aren't many guests. This one came up a
month ago. She dances on the moor--practising for some play which
opens in October."

"What's her name?"

"I don't know. They call her 'The Yellow Daffodil' because of that
bathing suit."

The girl was swimming now beyond the breakers.

Becky was envious. "I wish I could swim like that."

"You can do other things--that she can't do."

"What things?"

"Well, be a lady, for example. That's not exactly cricket, is it, to
draw a deadly parallel? But I don't want people like that dancing on
my moor."

CHAPTER XIV

THE DANCER ON THE MOOR

I

Randy's letter had set Becky adrift. She was not in love with him.
She was sure of that. And he had said he would not marry her without
love. He had said that if she owned her soul she would think of Dalton
as a cad and as a coward.

It seemed queer that Randy should be demanding things of her. He had
always been so glad to take anything she would give, and now she had
offered him herself, and he wouldn't have her. Not till she owned her
soul.

She knew what he meant. The thought of George was always with her.
She kept seeing him as she had first seen him at the station; as he had
been that wonderful day when they had had tea in the Pavilion; the
night in the music room when he had hissed her; the old garden with its
pale statues and box hedges; and always there was his sparkling glance,
his quick voice.

She would never own her soul until she forgot George. Until she put
him out of her life; until the thought of him would not make her burn
hot with humiliation; until the thought of him would not thrill to her
finger-tips.

She found Cope's easy and humorous companionsh