at a time at that little shanty on the beach there.
Hardest work in the world to get him away. He came over to dine with us
once or twice, but we saw scarcely anything of him. I hope his son will
not prove so obdurate."

"You are very kind," Hamel murmured.

"Mr. Hamel came into these parts to claim his father's property," Mr.
Fentolin said. "However, I have persuaded him to spend a day or two up
here before he transforms himself into a misanthrope. What of his golf,
Esther, eh?"

"Mr. Hamel plays very well, indeed," the girl replied.

"Your niece was too good for me," Hamel confessed.

Mr. Fentolin smiled.

"The politeness of this younger generation," he remarked, "keeps the
truth sometimes hidden from us. I perceive that I shall not be told who
won. Lady Saxthorpe, you are fortunate indeed in the morning you have
chosen for your visit. There is no sun in the world like an April sun,
and no corner of the earth where it shines with such effect as here.
Look steadily to the eastward of that second dike and you will see the
pink light upon the sands, which baffled every one until our friend
Hamel came and caught it on his canvas."

"I do see it," Lady Saxthorpe murmured. "What eyes you have, Mr.
Fentolin! What perception for colour!"

"Dear lady," Mr. Fentolin said, "I am one of those who benefit by the
law of compensations. On a morning like this I can spend hours merely
feasting my eyes upon this prospect, and I can find, if not happiness,
the next best thing. The world is full of beautiful places, but the
strange part of it is that beauty has countless phases, and each phase
differs in some subtle and unexplainable manner from all others. Look
with me fixedly, dear Lady Saxthorpe. Look, indeed, with more than your
eyes. Look at that flush of wild lavender, where it fades into the sands
on one side, and strikes the emerald green of that wet seamoss on the
other. Look at the liquid blue of that tongue of sea which creeps along
its bed through the yellow sands, through the dark meadowland, which
creeps and oozes and widens till in an hour's time it will have become a
river. Look at my sand islands, virgin from the foot of man, the home of
sea-gulls, the islands of a day. There may be other and more beautiful
places. There is none quite like this."

"I pity you no longer," Lady Saxthorpe asserted fervently. "The eyes of
the artist are a finer possession than the limbs of the athlete."

The butler announced lun