r ease, but in the
little silence that followed Miss Carter had time to feel baffled--in
the way. "Here is Mrs. Arbuthnot," she said in relief, as Ann came
slowly in on the doctor's arm. Before they reached the table the girl
had slipped away.

That afternoon she asked Miss Ives, pausing beside the basking group on
the sands to do so, if she would have tea informally with mamma and a
few friends. Oh--thank you, Miss Ives couldn't, to-day. Thank you. The
next day Miss Carter wondered if Miss Ives would like to spin out to
the Point to see the sunset? No, thank you so much. Miss Ives was just
going in. Another day brought a request for Miss Ives's company at
dinner, with just mamma and Mr. Polk and the Dancing Girl herself.
Declined. A fourth day found Miss Carter, camera in hand, smilingly
confronting the actress as she came out on the porch.

"Will you be very cross if I ask you to stand still just a moment, Miss
Ives?" asked the Dancing Girl.

"Oh, I'm afraid I will," said Julie, annoyed. "I DON'T like to be
photographed!" But she was rather disarmed at the speed with which Miss
Carter shut up her little camera.

"I know I bother you," said the girl, with a wistful sincerity that was
most becoming and with a heightened color, "but--but I just can't seem
to help it!" She walked down the steps beside Julie, laughing almost
with vexation at her own weakness. "I've always admired so--the people
who DO things! I've always wanted to do something myself," said Miss
Carter, awkwardly. "You don't know how unhappy it makes me. You don't
know how I'd love to do something for you!"

"You can, you can let me off being photographed, like a sweet child!"
said Julie, lightly. But twenty minutes later when, very trim and
dainty in her blue bathing suit and scarlet cap, she came out of the
bath-house to join Ann and the doctor on the beach, she reproached
herself. She might have met the stammered little confidence with
something warmer than a jesting word, she thought with a little shame.

"You're not going in again!" protested Ann. "Oh, CHIL-dren!"

"_I_ am," said Miss Ives, buoyantly. "I don't know about Jim. At Jim's
age every step counts, I suppose. These fashionable doctors habitually
overeat and oversleep, I understand, and it makes them lazy."

"I AM going in, Ann," said the doctor, with dignity, rising from the
sand and pointedly addressing his wife. A few moments later he and
Julie joyously breasted the sleepy roll of