l surf,
Genevieve was the one real swimmer. She was better even than Penny, and
she left Betty and George nowhere.

She had an endless repertory of amphibious stunts which she performed
with gusto, and in the intervals she took an equal satisfaction in
watching Penny's heroic but generally disastrous attempts to imitate
them.

The other two splashed around aimlessly and now and then remonstrated.

Now, it's all very well to talk about two hearts beating as one, and
in the accepted poetical sense of the words, of course Genevieve's and
George's did. But as a matter of physiological fact, they didn't. At the
end of twenty minutes or so George began turning a delicate blue and a
clatter as of distant castanets provided an obligato when he spoke, the
same being performed by George's teeth.

The person who made these observations was Betty.

"You'd better go out," she said. "You're freezing."

It ought to have been Genevieve who said it, of course, though the fact
that she was under water more than half the time might be advanced as
her excuse for failing to say it. But who could venture to excuse the
downright callous way in which she exclaimed, "Already? Why we've just
got in! Come along and dive through that wave. That'll warm you up!"

It was plain to George that she didn't care whether he was cold or not.
And, though the idea wouldn't quite go into words, it was also clear to
him that an ideal wife--a really womanly wife--would have turned blue
just a little before he began to.

"Thanks," he said, in a cold blue voice that matched the color of his
finger nails. "I think I've had enough."

Betty came splashing along beside him.

"I'm going out, too," she said. "We'll leave these porpoises to their
innocent play."

This was almost pure amiability, because she wasn't cold, and she'd been
having a pretty good time. Her other (practically negligible) motive
was that Penny might be reminded, by her withdrawal, of his forgotten
promise to teach her to float--and be sorry. Altogether, George would
have been showing only a natural and reasonable sense of his obligations
if he'd brightened up and flirted with her a little, instead of glooming
out to sea the way he did, paying simply no attention to her at all. So
at last she pricked him.

"Isn't it funny," she said, "the really blighting contempt that swimmers
feel for people who can't feel at home in the water--people who gasp and
shiver and keep their heads dry?"