Another constrained silence. 

 “Are you ever in London, Miss——?” 

 “Goodwin. Oh, yes; we generally go over in the winter, Mr.——” 

 “Cloyster. Really? How jolly. Do you go to the theatre much?” 

 “Oh, yes. We saw nearly everything last time we were over.” 

 There was a third silence. I saw a remark about the weather trembling on his lip, and, as I was beginning to feel the chill of the water a little, I determined to put a temporary end to the conversation. 

 “I think I will be swimming back now,” I said. 

 “You’re quite sure I can’t give you a tow?” 

 “Quite, thanks. Perhaps you would care to come to breakfast with us, Mr. Cloyster? I know my mother would be glad to see you.” 

 “It is very kind of you. I should be delighted. Shall we meet on the beach?” 

 I swam off to my cave to dress. 

 Breakfast was a success, for my mother was a philosopher. She said very little, but what she did say was magnificent. In her youth she had moved in literary circles, and now found her daily pleasure in the works of Schopenhauer, Kant, and other Germans. Her lightest reading was Sartor Resartus, and occasionally she would drop into Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the asparagus of her philosophic banquet. Her chosen mode of thought, far from leaving her inhuman or intolerant, gave her a social distinction which I had inherited from her. I could, if I had wished it, have attended with success the tea-drinkings, the tennis-playings, and the éclair-and-lemonade dances to which I was frequently invited. But I always refused. Nature was my hostess. Nature, which provided me with balmy zephyrs that were more comforting than buttered toast; which set the race of the waves to the ridges of Fermain, where arose no shrill, heated voice crying, “Love—forty”; which decked foliage in more splendid sheen than anything the local costumier could achieve, and whose poplars swayed more rhythmically than the dancers of the Assembly Rooms. 

 The constraint which had been upon us during our former conversation vanished at 

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