sure for him lay in her bliss as she
exhausted one pleasure after another, and ever sought for higher things:
Micksheen at the cat show attended by the liveried mulatto; the opera
and the dog show, with bonnets and costumes to match the occasion; then
her own carriage, used so discreetly as not to lose the respect of the
parish; and finally the renting of the third pew from the front in the
middle aisle of the cathedral, a step forward in the social world. How
he had enjoyed these events in her upward progress! As a closing event
for the first year of his new life, he suggested a villa by the sea for
the summer, with Mona and Louis as guests for the season, with as many
others as pleased her convenience. The light which broke over her face
at this suggestion came not from within, but direct from heaven!

She sent him modestly to a country of the Philistines known as Coney
Island, where he found the common herd enjoying a dish called chowder
amid much spontaneity and dirt, and mingling their uproarious bathing
with foaming beer; a picture framed in white sand and sounding sea, more
than pleasant to the jaded taste of an Endicott. The roar of the surf
drowned the mean uproar of discordant man. The details of life there
were too cheap to be looked at closely; but at a distance the surface
had sufficient color and movement. He found an exception to this
judgment. La Belle Colette danced with artistic power, though in
surroundings unsuited to her skill. He called it genius. In an open
pavilion, whose roughness the white sand and the white-green surf helped
to condone, on a tawdry stage, she appeared, a slight, pale, winsome
beauty, clad in green and white gauze, looking like a sprite of the
near-by sea. The witchery of her dancing showed rare art, which was lost
altogether on the simple crowd. She danced carelessly, as if mocking the
rustics, and made her exit without applause.

"Where did you get your artiste, August?" he said to a waiter.

"You saw how well she dances, hey? Poor Colette! The best creature in
the world ... opens more wine than five, and gives too much away. But
for the drink she might dance at the opera."

Arthur went often to see her dance, with pity for the talent thrown
away, and brought his mother under protest from that cautious lady, who
would have nothing to do with so common a place. The villa stood in
respectable, even aristocratic, quiet at the far end of the island, and
Anne regarded it almost