slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a
perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man
walking in his sleep. Men couldn't stand him, they couldn't get a word
out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did
he live? Of course there were stories, but such stories! They simply
couldn't be told. The women he'd been seen with, the places he'd been
seen in... but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the
women at the Bay privately thought he'd commit a murder one day. Yes,
even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful concoction
she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the beach; but
cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her
mouth.

Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the
tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her
jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole with
ribbon bows on the shoulders.

"Mercy on us," said Mrs. Harry Kember, "what a little beauty you are!"

"Don't!" said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the
other, she felt a little beauty.

"My dear--why not?" said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own
petticoat. Really--her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and
a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case... "And you
don't wear stays, do you?" She touched Beryl's waist, and Beryl sprang
away with a small affected cry. Then "Never!" she said firmly.

"Lucky little creature," sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.

Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some one
who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her bathing-dress
all at one and the same time.

"Oh, my dear--don't mind me," said Mrs. Harry Kember. "Why be shy? I
shan't eat you. I shan't be shocked like those other ninnies." And she
gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.

But Beryl was shy. She never undressed in front of anybody. Was that
silly? Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something
to be ashamed of. Why be shy indeed! She glanced quickly at her friend
standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette;
and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast. Laughing
recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was
not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.

"That's better," said Mrs. Ha