hrieking and clutching the
bath-guest.

'_Prachtvoll_, nicht?' I heard her say with an odious jollity through
the singing in my ears. Every wave lifted me a little off my feet. My
mouth was full of water. My eyes were blinded with spray. I continued to
cling to her with one hand, miserably conscious that after this there
would be no shaking her off, and rubbing my eyes with the other looked
at her. My shrieks froze on my lips. Where had I seen her face before?
Surely I knew it? She wore one of those grey india-rubber caps, drawn
tightly down to her eyes, that keep the water out so well and are so
hopelessly hideous. She smiled back at me with the utmost friendliness,
and asked me again whether I did not think it glorious.

'_Ach ja-ja_,' I panted, letting her go and groping blindly for the
rope. 'Thank you, thank you; pray pardon me for having seized you so
rudely.'

'_Bitte, bitte_,' she cried, beginning to jump up and down again.

'Who in the world is she?' I asked myself, getting away as fast as I
could. 'Where have I seen her before?'

Probably she was an undesirable acquaintance. Perhaps she was my
dressmaker. I had not paid her last absurd bill, and that and a certain
faint resemblance to what my dressmaker would look like in an
india-rubber cap was what put her into my head; and no sooner had I
thought it than I was sure of it, and the conviction was one of quite
unprecedented disagreeableness. How profoundly unpleasant to meet this
person in the water, to have come all the way to Ruegen, to have suffered
at Goehren, to have walked miles in the heat of the day to Thiessow, for
the sole purpose of bathing tete-a-tete with my dressmaker. And to have
tumbled in on top of her and clung about her neck! I climbed out and ran
into my cell. My idea was to get dressed and away as speedily as
possible; yet with all Gertrud's haste, just as I came out of my cell
the other woman came out of hers in her clothes, and we met face to
face. With one accord we stopped dead and our mouths fell open, 'What,'
she cried, 'it is _you_?'

'What,' I cried, 'it is _you_?'

It was my cousin Charlotte whom I had not seen for ten years.

THE FOURTH DAY--_Continued_

AT THIESSOW

My cousin Charlotte was twenty when I saw her last. Now she was thirty,
besides having had an india-rubber cap on. Both these things make a
difference to a woman, though she did not seem aware of it, and was lost
in amazement that I should not ha