ty saw them, with prospective eyes--out of the sea of
fire on to the high shores. Here, by the edge of the sea, were she and
Tommy and a sand-castle dotted with pumice-stone like a plum-pudding....
A swift moment of vivid intuition came to her, illuminating her vision
of life, as she looked at Tommy, lying on his back, with his straw hat
tilted over his eyes. She was lit by a flash of great certainty, of
strange discernment.

The flash passed, and left her as one who wakes from a trance. She lay
and looked at Tommy, and, looking, felt a desire for speech.

'I'm thinking, Tommy, that you're very lucky to have me to play with
you, and that I'm rather lucky to have you to play with me.'

Tommy pushed his hat a little up from one eye, and turned a meditative
and mildly surprised regard upon his sister. Her remark had had a
flavour of unusualness. But he did not comment upon it; it was as if, in
the momentary pause that followed his glance, something between them,
very definite, very permanent in its existence, entirely unquestioned,
because it had always been there, and hardly ever alluded to in words,
because they were too close to each other and too unsentimental, took
more definite and visible shape. Their friendship, their close
comradeship, their affection, stood in that moment between them,
recognized mutely of both. The kingdoms might fall, but that stood. Thus
they did not word it to themselves; but, unformed, the knowledge
illumined the consciousness of both.

But after that moment's pause Tommy returned to normalities.

'I grant you your luck; in fact, I might envy it you if I was less
sweet-natured. Mine, of course, is less vividly striking, as Mrs.
Venables would put it. But no matter; never be ungenerous on Sunday,
and I'm glad you should have a happy life.'

Betty dragged him up forcibly by the hands, and they went up the beach
to Mass in the little church. That illuminated moment of insight seemed
to walk between them to the doors.

After Mass they went to the Albergo Vittoria, and had lunch on the
terrace.

They talked then of the Venables. Betty said she had had her last
sitting.

'I should like her to sit to me,' Tommy said; 'the way she stands, don't
you know, with her head back'--the gesture of his own caught it not
unsuccessfully--'and her eyes when she's going to smile. And the way her
upper lip's so like her chin.'

Betty nodded. She, too, had gathered all that in the rarefied mountain
ai