e of a complete
change of outlook. His remorse and timidity left him. His brain worked
clearly.

"Very well," said the professor.

The worm had turned!

CHAPTER XIV

Mornings are beautiful all over the earth but Nature keeps a special
kind of morning for early summer use at Friendly Bay. In sudden
clearness, in chill sweetness, in almost awful purity there is no other
morning like it. It wrings the human soul quite clear of everything
save wonder at its loveliness.

Desire never bathed until the sun was up, not because she feared the
dawn-cold water but because she would not stir the unbroken beauty of
its opal tide. With the first rays of the sun, the spell would break,
the waves would dance again, the gulls would soar and dip, the crabs
would scuttle across the shining sand, the round wet head of a friendly
seal would pop up here and there to say good-morning. Then, Desire
would swim--far out--so far that Spence, watching her, would feel his
heart contract. He could not follow her--yet. But he never begged her
not to take the risk, if risk there were. Why should she lose one happy
thrill in her own joyous strength because he feared? Better that she
should never come back from these long, glorious swims than that he
should have held her from them by so much as a gesture.

And she always did come back, glowing, dripping, laughing, her head as
sleek as a young seal's, salt upon her lips and on her wave-whipped
cheek. Spence, whose swims were shorter and more sedate, would usually
have breakfast ready.

But upon this particular morning Desire loitered. Though the smell of
bacon was in the air, she sat pensively in the shallows of an outgoing
tide and flung shells at the crabs. She would have told you that she
was thinking. But had she used the word "feeling" she would have been
nearer the truth. And the thing which she obscurely felt was that
something had mysteriously altered for the worse in a world which, of
late, had shown remarkable promise. It was a small thing. She hardly
knew what it was. Merely a sense of dissonance somewhere.

Whatever it was, it had not been there yesterday. Yesterday morning she
had felt no desire to sit in the shallows and throw shells at crabs.
Yesterday morning her mind had been full of that happy inconsequence
which feels no need of thought. Today was different. Mentally she shook
herself with some irritation. "What is the matter with you?" she asked.
But the self she addr