joyously and frankly.

"I don't believe any one but you would have done that, Grant. And what
a foot you have!"

He replied, with much pomposity, that it was the far-famed Arabian
foot, the instep of which arched so beautifully that water could flow
beneath it without wetting the skin. Just at present, though, he
thought a little water might run over it to advantage, instead of
under, the sand being a trifle mucky. And why would no one else have
done such a thing? And he was glad she liked his foot; in fact, he was
glad she liked anything about him, and rather wondered that she did,
and the world had become to him a good place to live in.

All of which was but the sentimentalism which appertains to a man and a
woman in love with each other, but the drift of thought continued in
the direction suggested by his action and her comment. They looked at
the lake, with its shifting coloring of green and blue and purple, and
he told her how, some day, he would teach her to swim like a Sandwich
Island beauty, and she said she would like to learn. She liked the
water.

"I'm very glad of that," he commented; "I like it myself. I am a great
bather. I admire the English for the 'tubbing' which is made such a
subject of jest against them by other people. There must be water into
which I may tumble when I rise in the morning, or water in abundance in
some way, else I should be a trifle uncomfortable all day long. I
don't mean just a mild lavatory business, you know, but a plunge or a
cataract, or something of that sort. It is barely possible, my dear,
that you are going to marry a man whose remote ancestors were the
product of evolution from otters, instead of monkeys. Think of that!"

And she confessed, half-blushingly, her own regard for water, and that
she had been laughed at by other women for what they deemed a fancy
carried to an extreme. And she said she was very glad that a great big
Somebody was dainty in his ways. While in many respects she could not
approve of him, it was a comfort, at least, to be enabled to think of
him as ever clean and wholesome, and as having one weakness of which
she could condone.

He looked at her majesty, as she sat enthroned upon a little mound, but
to her small oration made no reply. He was worshiping her bodily. And
from this conversation came a sequel, a day or two later, which was but
the worshiping put into things material. Of his love and the bath he
would have fancies