looked down at her hand with its new wedding ring, and a little blush rose to her pale cheeks. 

"He's mine, at any rate," she told herself fiercely. "Even if he doesn't love me, he is my husband, and nobody else can have him." 

It was some sort of comfort to know that the adored Chris was hers. The knowledge sent some streak of sunshine across the blackness of last night. 

She strolled along restlessly, blind to the beauty of the sea and sky, lost in her own bruised, bewildered thoughts. She had passed the boy with the shrimping net, and had come abreast with the man sauntering at the water's edge without noticing it, until he spoke to her. 

"Good morning, Mrs. Lawless." 

She started, flushing painfully as her eyes met the kindly quizzical gaze of "Feathers." 

He looked uglier than ever in the morning sunshine, was her first bitter thought, and he wore a loose, collarless shirt which was open at the neck and showed his thick, muscular throat. 

His big feet were thrust into not over-clean white canvas shoes, and a damp towel and bathing costume hung inelegantly over one shoulder. 

"Good morning," said Marie. "I thought I was the first one up," she added resentfully. 

He laughed carelessly. 

"I'm always up with the lark—or aren't there any larks at a place like this? I've had a dip—I like the sea to myself, before it's crowded with flappers and fat old ladies." 

"Perhaps they prefer it, too," said Marie. The words had escaped 32 her almost before she was aware of it, and she flushed hotly, ashamed of her rudeness. 

32

But "Feathers" only laughed. 

"I knew you didn't like me," he said in friendly fashion. "I could read it in your eyes last night." 

She was nonplussed by his frankness. 

"I can't like you or dislike you," she said after a moment. "I don't know anything about you." 

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