rry Kember. They began to go down the
beach together. "Really, it's a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.
Somebody's got to tell you some day."

The water was quite warm. It was that marvellous transparent blue,
flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you
kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the
waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched,
gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump, so
that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.

"I believe in pretty girls having a good time," said Mrs. Harry Kember.
"Why not? Don't you make a mistake, my dear. Enjoy yourself." And
suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly, quickly,
like a rat. Then she flicked round and began swimming back. She was
going to say something else. Beryl felt that she was being poisoned
by this cold woman, but she longed to hear. But oh, how strange, how
horrible! As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she looked, in her black
waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted above the water,
just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her husband.

Chapter 1.VI.

In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of
the front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty--yes, if you held one of those flowers on the
palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small
thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of a
loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a bell.
And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour. But
as soon as they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed them
off your frock as you talked; the horrid little things got caught in
one's hair. Why, then, flower at all? Who takes the trouble--or the
joy--to make all these things that are wasted, wasted... It was uncanny.

On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was the boy. Sound
asleep he lay, his head turned away from his mother. His fine dark hair
looked more like a shadow than like real hair, but his ear was a bright,
deep coral. Linda clasped her hands above her head and crossed her feet.
It was very pleasant to know that all these bungalows were