,
accepted silently and semi-consciously, semi-unconsciously worked out
together. Had they not been very strongly drawn to each other by now,
this would not have happened at all. But they enjoyed it none the less.
To begin with, Mrs. Dale was suffering from a sick headache the morning
after. In the next place, Kinroy suggested to his friends to go for a
lark to South Beach, which was one of the poorest and scrubbiest of all
the beaches on Staten Island. In the next place, Mrs. Dale suggested
that Suzanne be allowed to go and that perhaps Eugene would be amused.
She rather trusted him as a guide and mentor.

Eugene said calmly that he did not object. He was eager to be anywhere
alone with Suzanne, and he fancied that some opportunity would present
itself whereby once they were there, they could be together, but he did
not want to show it. Once more the car was called and they departed,
being let off at one end of a silly panorama which stretched its shabby
length for a mile along the shore. The chauffeur took the car back to
the house, it being agreed that they could reach him by phone. The party
started down the plank walk, but almost immediately, because of
different interests, divided. Eugene and Suzanne stopped to shoot at a
shooting gallery. Next they stopped at a cane rack to ring canes.
Anything was delightful to Eugene which gave him an opportunity to
observe his inamorata, to see her pretty face, her smile, and to hear
her heavenly voice. She rung a cane for him. Every gesture of hers was
perfection; every look a thrill of delight. He was walking in some
elysian realm which had nothing to do with the tawdry evidence of life
about him.

They followed the boardwalk southward, after a ride in the Devil's
Whirlpool, for by now Suzanne was caught in the persuasive subtlety of
his emotion and could no more do as her honest judgment would have
dictated than she could have flown. It needed some shock, some discovery
to show her whither she was drifting and this was absent. They came to a
new dance hall, where a few servant girls and their sweethearts were
dancing, and for a lark Eugene proposed that they should enter. They
danced together again, and though the surroundings were so poor and the
music wretched, Eugene was in heaven.

"Let's run away and go to the Terra-Marine," he suggested, thinking of a
hotel farther south along the shore. "It is so pleasant there. This is
all so cheap."

"Where is it?" asked Suzan