ready to live."

"I'm afraid you don't realize," he said hesitatingly. "People
wouldn't understand. You've your reputation to think of, you know."

She looked straight at him. "No--not even that. I'm even free
from reputation." Then, as his face saddened and his eyes
glistened with sympathy, "You needn't pity me. See where it's
brought me."

"You're a strong swimmer--aren't you?" he said tenderly. "But
then there isn't any safe and easy crossing to the isles of
freedom. It's no wonder most people don't get further than
gazing and longing."

"Probably I shouldn't," confessed Susan, "if I hadn't been
thrown into the water. It was a case of swim or drown."

"But most who try are drowned--nearly all the women."

"Oh, I guess there are more survive than is generally supposed.
So much lying is done about that sort of thing."

"What a shrewd young lady it is! At any rate, you have reached
the islands."

"But I'm not queen of them yet," she reminded him. "I'm only a
poor, naked, out-of-breath castaway lying on the beach."

He laughed appreciatively. Very clever, this extremely pretty
young woman. "Yes--you'll win. You'll be queen." He lifted his
champagne glass and watched the little bubbles pushing gayly and
swiftly upward. "So--you've cast over your reputation."

"I told you I had reached the beach naked." A reckless light in
her eyes now. "Fact is, I had none to start with. Anybody has a
reason for starting--or for being started. That was mine, I guess."

"I've often thought about that matter of reputation--in a man or
a woman--if they're trying to make the bold, strong swim. To
care about one's reputation means fear of what the world says.
It's important to care about one's character--for without
character no one ever got anywhere worth getting to. But it's
very, very dangerous to be afraid for one's reputation. And--I
hate to admit it, because I'm hopelessly conventional at bottom,
but it's true--reputation--fear of what the world says--has sunk
more swimmers, has wrecked more characters than it ever helped.
So--the strongest and best swimmers swim naked."

Susan was looking thoughtfully at him over the rim of her glass.
She took a sip of the champagne, said: "If I hadn't been quite
naked, I'd have sunk--I'd have been at the bottom--with the
fishes----"

"Don't!" he cried. "Thank God, you did whatever you've
done--yes, I mean that--whatever you've done, since it enabled
you to swim