word had been written. It hurt unbearably to think that Aunt Madge had known all the time. Marie clenched her hands as she recalled the old lady's whispered good-bye: "God bless you and make you very happy!" How could she have said such a thing—knowing what she knew? "I will be happy, I will," the girl told herself over and over again. After all, there were other things in the world besides love. She got up early, long before the other people in the hotel were astir, and went out and down to the sands. It was a lovely morning, warm and sunny, and the tide was out, leaving a long wet stretch of golden sand behind. A boy with bare, brown legs was pushing his way through the little waves with a shrimping net, and further along a man was strolling by the water's edge, idly picking up pebbles and throwing them into the sea. Marie walked on, the fresh breeze blowing through her hair and fanning her tired face. Only two months ago and she had been a girl at school, with her hair down her back and not a care in the world save an occasional heartache when she thought of Chris. Only two months! She felt as if she had taken a great spring across the gulf dividing girlhood from womanhood, and was looking back across it now with regretful eyes. Why had she been in such a hurry to grow up? She understood for the first time what Aunt Madge and other grown-up people meant when they said that they looked upon their school days as the happiest of their lives. "Are mine going to be the happiest?" Marie thought. Even they had not been very happy. She had never been very popular at school, and she had never been clever. Her lessons had always worried her, and she never quite got over het first feeling of homesickness as the 31 other girls did. 31 "You're too sentimental, too romantic!" so her best friend, Dorothy Webber, had often told her. "If you don't cure yourself, my dear, you'll find a lot of trouble waiting for you in the future." She had found it already, sooner even than Dorothy had dreamed. She
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