arts of Groix rose clear-cut against a horizon where no haze
curtained the sea; the breakers had receded from the coast on a heavy
ebb-tide, and I saw them in frothy outline, noiselessly churning the
shallows beyond the outer bar.

And then my reverie ended abruptly; a step on the gravel walk brought
me to my feet.... There she stood, lovely in a fresh morning-gown
deeply belted with turquoise-shells, her ruddy hair glistening, coiled
low on a neck of snow.

For the first time she showed embarrassment in her greeting, scarcely
touching my hand, speaking with a new constraint in a voice which grew
colder as she hesitated.

"We were frightened; we are so glad that you were not badly hurt. I
thought you might find it comfortable here--of course I could not know
that you were not seriously injured."

"That is fortunate for me," I said, pleasantly, "for I am afraid you
would not have offered this shelter if you had known how little
injured I really was."

"Yes, I should have offered it--had I reason to believe you would
have accepted. I have felt that perhaps you might think what I have
done was unwarranted."

"I think you did the most graciously unselfish thing a woman could
do," I said, quickly. "You offered your best; and the man who took it
cannot--dare not--express his gratitude."

The emotion in my voice warned me to cease; the faintest color tinted
her cheeks, and she looked at me with beautiful, grave eyes that
slowly grew inscrutable, leaving me standing diffident and silent
before her.

The breeze shifted, bringing with it the hollow sea-thunder. She
turned her head and glanced out across the ocean, hands behind her,
fingers linked.

"I have come here into your garden uninvited," I said.

"Shall we sit here--a moment?" she suggested, without turning.

Presently she seated herself in one corner of the bench; her gaze
wandered over the partly blighted garden, then once more centred on
the seaward skyline.

The color of her hands, her neck, fascinated me. That flesh texture of
snow and roses, firmly and delicately modelled, which sometimes is
seen with red hair, I had seen once before in a picture by a Spanish
master, but never, until now, in real life.

And she was life incarnate in her wholesome beauty--a beauty of which
I had perceived only the sad shadow at La Trappe--a sweet, healthy,
exquisite woman, moulded, fashioned, colored by a greater Master than
the Spanish painter dreaming of perfection