he scented thyme about me and the waves
washing rhythmically at the foot of the tall white cliff on the top of
which our noisy party had been feasting.

It was nice to be alone here now, quite alone.... The washing of the
waves seemed presently to die away in my ears. The booming of the bees
in those pink cushions of thyme seemed to grow fainter and fainter....
Then these sounds began to increase again in a sweet, and deep, and
musical crescendo. Very pretty, that chorus of the bees!

I kept my eyes shut and I listened.

The refrain seemed actually to grow into a little rhythmic tune.
Then--surely those were words that were fitted to the tune? Yes! I
caught the words of that tender old Elizabethan cradle song:

"Gol-den slum-bers kiss your eyes!"

For a second I imagined that the Serio-girl had stolen up, and, thinking
I was asleep, had begun to sing me awake.

Then I realised that it was a man's voice that crooned so close behind
my ear.

Quickly I opened my eyes and turned.

I found myself looking straight into those absurdly brilliant, dark-blue
eyes, fringed by those ridiculously long black lashes of Miss Million's
adored, the Hon. Jim. So he'd come!

Hastily I sat up, with my hands to my hair.

"It looks very nice as it is, Miss Lovelace," said the Hon. Jim gravely,
with a curious twitch at the corners of his firmly cut mouth. "Tell me,
now. Do you consider it a fair dispensation of Providence that all the
domestic virtues should be of less avail to a girl in a sea-breeze than
the natural kink in the chestnut hair of her?"

It is ridiculous, the way this young man always starts a conversation
with some silly question to which there is absolutely no answer!

The only thing to be done was to ignore it! So I rose to my feet as
primly as I could, and said: "Good afternoon! They will all be sorry
that you came too late for the picnic. I believe Miss Vi Vassity has
gone down there, to the left"--here I pointed towards the grey-blue
sweep of distance cut by the mast of a wireless station somewhere near.
"And Miss Million is with her."

The Hon. Jim said gently: "I was not really asking which way they had
gone. What I really wanted to know is----"

Here he looked hard at me----"What has happened to--" here his voice
changed again--"to the gentleman from the new, young, and magnificent
country, where the girls are all peaches, and their lovers are real,
virile, red-blooded, clean-limbed, s