thickest of the clay smears with her
handkerchief, but the experiment was rather a failure. As they started
to walk back along the beach she suddenly turned to him and said:

"I haven't told you how--how much obliged I am for--for what you did. If
you hadn't come, I don't know what would have happened to me."

"Oh, that's all right," he answered lightly. He was reveling in the
dramatic qualities of the situation. She did not speak again for some
time and he, too, walked on in silence enjoying his day dream. Suddenly
he became aware that she was looking at him steadily and with an odd
expression on her face.

"What is it?" he asked. "Why do you look at me that way?"

Her answer was, as usual, direct and frank.

"I was thinking about you," she said. "I was thinking that I must have
been mistaken, partly mistaken, at least."

"Mistaken? About me, do you mean?"

"Yes; I had made up my mind that you were--well, one sort of fellow, and
now I see that you are an entirely different sort. That is, you've shown
that you can be different."

"What on earth do you mean by that?"

"Why, I mean--I mean--Oh, I'm sure I had better not say it. You won't
like it, and will think I had better mind my own affairs--which I should
do, of course."

"Go on; say it."

She looked at him again, evidently deliberating whether or not to speak
her thought. Then she said:

"Well, I will say it. Not that it is really my business, but because in
a way it is begging your pardon, and I ought to do that. You see, I had
begun to believe that you were--that you were--well, that you were not
very--very active, you know."

"Active? Say, look here, Helen! What--"

"Oh, I don't wonder you don't understand. I mean that you were
rather--rather fond of not doing much--of--of--"

"Eh? Not doing much? That I was lazy, do you mean?"

"Why, not exactly lazy, perhaps, but--but--Oh, how CAN I say just what
I mean! I mean that you were always saying that you didn't like the work
in your grandfather's office."

"Which I don't."

"And that some day you were going to do something else."

"Which I am."

"Write or act or do something--"

"Yes, and that's true, too."

"But you don't, you know. You don't do anything. You've been talking
that way ever since I knew you, calling this a one-horse town and saying
how you hated it, and that you weren't going to waste your life here,
and all that, but you keep staying here and doing just the same things.
T