tching a lady who had just come out of her
bath-house and was passing very near them on her way to the water.
Maxwell felt the inattention in his wife's tone and looked up.

The bather returned their joint gaze steadily from eyes that seemed, as
Maxwell said, to smoulder under their long lashes, and to question her
effect upon them in a way that he was some time finding a phrase for.
He was tormented to make out whether she were a large person or not;
without her draperies he could not tell. But she moved with splendid
freedom, and her beauty expressed a maturity of experience beyond her
years; she looked young, and yet she looked as if she had been taking
care of herself a good while. She was certainly very handsome, Louise
owned to herself, as the lady quickened her pace, and finally ran down
to the water and plunged into a breaker that rolled in at the right
moment in uncommon volume.

"Well?" she asked her husband, whose eyes had gone with hers.

"We ought to have clapped."

"Do you think she is an actress?"

"I don't know. I never saw her before. She seemed to turn the sunshine
into lime-light as she passed. Why! that's rather pretty, isn't it? And
it's a verse. I wonder what it is about these people. The best of them
have nothing of the stage in them--at least, the men haven't. I'm not
sure, though, that the women haven't. There are lots of women off the
stage who are actresses, but they don't seem so. They're personal; this
one was impersonal. She didn't seem to regard me as a man; she regarded
me as a house. Did you feel that?"

"Yes, that was it, I suppose. But she regarded you more than she did me,
I think."

"Why, of course. You were only a matinee."

They sat half an hour longer in the sand, and then he complained that
the wind blew all the warmth out of him as fast as the sun shone it into
him. She felt his hand next her and found it still cold; after a glance
round she furtively felt his forehead.

"You're still thinking," she sighed. "Come! We must go back."

"Yes. That girl won't be out of the water for half an hour yet; and we
couldn't wait to see her clothed and in her right mind afterwards."

"What makes you think she's a girl?" asked his wife, as they moved
slowly off.

He did not seem to have heard her question. He said, "I don't believe I
can make the new play go, Louise; I haven't the strength for it. There's
too much good stuff in Haxard; I can't throw away what I've done on it."