utinous.

"How untransparent it is," he said, "lapis lazuli and turquoise and
chrysoprase--no emeralds or aquamarines, or sapphires."

"How are we to get in our purple without an amethyst?"

"I don't know."

"That is what comes from not reading the Book of Revelations," she said.

They saw big, dissolving, poisonous jellyfish in the sea, mysteriously
without lines--and tidy slabs of jellyfish on the beach. They found a
starfish, and wondered who came to dance a sword dance round it. They
picked up shells that looked as if they had fallen out of fading sunsets
or glimmering dawns--they looked into pools of shutting and opening sea
anemones.

They never noticed a sardine box or an old boot.

They were happy.

Over her head was a scarlet paper sunshade. It looked like a huge
tropical flower.

"Paula," he said--and his eyes opened to her like a magic trap door.

That night they stayed indoors.

"Tell me the things that life has given you," he said, "the things that
have made you so rich."

"If I am rich," she said, "it is from the things that _I_ have given."

"Yes," he said, "but why do you impoverish yourself at my expense?"

"Please," she said, "don't talk about that. There are in all of us
exposed places--you can call them pain or romance--Sehnsucht or
memory--but they are the sanctuaries of our hearts--they cannot be
violated."

"Paula," he said, "you have made too much of life. You have made it into
the sort of hope that is always a disillusionment."

"Yes," she murmured very low.

"Why were you so unpractical?" his bantering tone revived her.

"I have done for some one (even for you, perhaps) what I have never done
for myself;" she was smiling. "I will tell you a story. There was once a
man who loved me. He was born with everything--a marvellous name, great
riches, beauty, a magnetic quality that I have never seen equalled. I
always reproached him with having added nothing to his inheritance--no
glory--no achievement--'I have spent,' he would say, shrugging his
shoulders. 'Wasted,' I retorted tartly. 'If you like. I have never
admitted my past or my future as barriers--or even frontiers--to my
actions. I have lived without forethought or arriere pensee--without the
weakness of regrets or the stinginess of precautions,' and then he
turned to me--his eyes were half shut and his voice was muffled as if a
flood were battering on the door of his dispassionateness, 'I have had
everything in life exce