days were never to have been.

The Ainslies came out of the door together.[Pg 57] "And you never told us that you had met Miss Tabor last Christmas," said Bob. "I call that rather cool. I just mentioned you last night, and she asked all sorts of questions about how long you had been here and how long you expected to stay. For my part, I think you must have made quite an impression."

[Pg 57]

"Indeed he has," laughed Miss Tabor. "Do you know, Mary, Mr. Crosby is the only thoroughly frivolous institution of learning I ever saw. He never spoke a word all Christmas that added to the party's fund of information, except to tell us of a new and a more indigestible way to make Welsh rarebit."

Evidently Christmas was to be the last and only time that we had met. I thanked fate and my own discomfiture that I had let fall no word to the Ainslies and we went off to our tennis. We won our game rather easily. Miss Tabor played a shade better than the average woman, covering her court with a forethoughtful ease that did the work without wasting exertion. She seemed not athletic, but to do outdoor things as some other woman might move through a ball-room. When we had finished playing, Bob was a dripping ruin, and Mrs. Ainslie[Pg 58] and I vigorously hot; but Miss Tabor, who had done no less than her share, laid aside her racquet as coolly as she had taken it up.

[Pg 58]

All the way down to the beach she kept the three of us in such a shout of laughter that staider people glanced aside at us. I made the change into a bathing-suit with abandoned haste, yet I found her waiting. The sea was evidently a passion with her as it was with me. Her eyes were shining with excitement, her head thrown a little back, and all her slim body, tender in every graceful line, was vibrant with the thrill of the salt air. She gave me her hand as a child might have done, and we turned up the beach, running lightly until the voices of the bathers died behind us.

Suddenly she stopped. "Do you feel that way about it, too?" she asked.

"What way? As if the first plunge of the year were a sort of sacred rite?"

"Yes," she answered. "There is something about it—you feel as if it were such a splendid thing that after all your waiting for it—now, when the water is there before you, you must wait a little sacrificial moment. I didn't feel like going in just at the first among 

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