o explain his strong antipathy to her.

"No, I never thought of those things. But one grows tired in
town--housekeeping, models and all of it. My work is very light, but I do
not like to work at all. And here--the beach is silent and the sky blue
and the sea rolls--rolls all day long: it is like coming home after one
has been out on the streets."

"About as keen comprehension of Nature as the tree yonder," thought
Neckart contemptuously. But, after all, the tree was warmed, and its sap
ran stronger, and it grew and broadened in the sun and air; and that was
more than he could say of painter or poet.

He lay at her feet, leaning on his elbow, for an hour or more. He had
meant to gauge her intellect, experience and character in a few minutes.
It was a recreation which had sometimes amused him when with women. As
soon as his curiosity was satisfied he was done with them. But the
discoveries he had made in those pretty little dwellings innocently
opening their doors to wandering hearts of marriageable men! The miserable
shams inside, the traps, the dark rooms full of all uncleanness! To-day he
forgot his system of exploration. He began to feel the physical effect of
coming from close streets and striving work into this vast open space--the
drowsiness which men experience on high mountains or by the sea, and which
has a subtle, lasting enchantment in it. The damp wind bent and whitened
the stretches of salt grass in the meadows behind him; brown clouds swept
from west to east overhead in endless procession; the great dun-colored
plane of the sea rose and fell steadily: for the rest, except the shrill
pipe of a fishhawk perched on a dead tree by its nest, there was silence.
He spoke to Jane now and then, but for the most part forgot her. She had
fallen into the motionless quiet which seemed habitual to her. Some of the
brilliant women he knew would have dug holes in the sand, or chattered
gossip, or interpreted to him with much intellectual force the meaning of
land and sky, or have taken their last love-affair or other private little
misery to give words to the complaint of the sea. This girl seemed only a
part of the shore, as much as sea or sand. The sun warmed, the air blew on
her as on them: if they gave her anything besides, she too kept their
secret.

Occasionally Neckart roused himself to talk briefly to her, and noticed
then a blunt directness in her speech that would have appalled an ordinary
hearer. It was her h