? I did not mean to drag you out. You had
rather rest, and smoke.'

'This is rest,' he answered.

The next moment, the ridge of the shingle was passed, and Ethel's feet
were sinking in the depth of pebbles, her cheeks freshened by the
breeze, her lips salted by the spray tossed in by the wind from the
wave crests. At the edge of the water she stood--as all others stand
there--watching the heaving from far away come nearer, nearer, curl
over in its pride of green glassy beauty, fall into foam, and draw
back, making the pebbles crash their accompanying 'frsch.' The
repetition, the peaceful majesty, the blue expanse, the straight
horizon, so impressed her spirit as to rivet her eyes and chain her
lips; and she receded step by step before the tide, unheeding anything
else, not even perceiving her companion's eyes fixed on her, half
curiously, half sadly.

'Well, Ethel,' at last he said.

'I never guessed it!' she said, with a gasp. 'No wonder Harry cannot
bear to be away from it. Must we leave it?' as he moved back.

'Only to smooth ground,' said Dr. Spencer; 'it is too dark to stay here
among the stones and crab-pots.'

The summer twilight was closing in; lights shining in the village under
the cliffs, and looking mysterious on distant points of the coast;
stars were shining forth in the pale blue sky, and the young moon
shedding a silver rippled beam on the water.

'If papa were but here!' said Ethel, wakening from another gaze, and
recollecting that she was not making herself agreeable.

'So you like the expedition?'

'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney
said to Coleridge at Lodore.'

'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!'

'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!'

'To find anything superior to Minster Street.'

'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that there
is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.'

She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might
have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.'

'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I
forgot there was such a cause.'

'Cause--you know nothing about it.'

She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken
wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood.

'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made me
a wanderer?'

'Only what papa told me.'