ward him with a start, as though he wakened her suddenly out of
somnambulism, but even as she wheeled, her face brightened and a
bantering merriment sounded in her voice, countering all his solicitous
inquiries with gay retorts.

When a week of charming but unsatisfying association had passed Stuart
Farquaharson felt that the time had come when he must talk with her less
superficially. It was as if they had only waded in the shallows of
conversation--and he wanted to strike out and swim in deeper waters. The
opportunity, when it came, was not of his own making. It was an evening
when there was dancing in the large lounge of The Arms. Farquaharson and
Conscience had gone, between dances, to the tiled veranda overlooking
the sea. The moon was spilling showers of radiance from horizon to
shore, and making of the beach a foreground of pale silver. The veranda
itself was a place of blue shadows between the yellow splotches of the
window lights. After a little she laid a hand lightly on Stuart's arm.

"Don't you want to take me for a stroll on the beach?" she asked a shade
wearily. "I'm tired of so many people."

They followed the twisting line of the wet sands and at last halted by
the prow of a beached row-boat, where the girl enthroned herself, gazing
meditatively off to sea.

"Conscience," he asked slowly, "you have used a diplomacy worthy of a
better cause, in devising ways to keep me from talking with you
alone--why?"

"Have I done that?" she countered.

"You know you have. Of course you've known I wanted to make love to you.
Why wouldn't you let me?"

"Because," she answered gravely, meeting his eyes with full candor, "I
didn't want you to--make love to me. I'm not ready for that."

"I haven't said I wasn't willing to wait, have I?" he suggested quietly.
"You don't appear to throw barriers of silence between yourself and
Billy."

"No. That's different.... I'm not--" Suddenly she broke off and laughed
at herself.

Then a little startled, at her own frankness, she admitted in a low
voice, "I'm not afraid of Billy's unsettling me."

The man felt his temples throb with a sudden and intoxicating elation.
He steadied himself against its agitation to demand,

"And you are--afraid that I might?"

She was sitting with the moonlight waking her dark hair into a somber
luster and a gossamer shimmer on the white of her evening gown. Her
hands lay unmoving in her lap and she slowly nodded her confession.

"You see,