afterward at the Sea Light Inn was a rather gloomy affair.
George's lonely grandeur was only made the worse, it seemed, by
Genevieve's belated concern lest he might have taken cold through not
having gone and dressed directly he came out of the water. Genevieve
then turned very frosty to Penny, having decided suddenly that it was
all his fault.

As for Betty, though she was as amiable a little soul as breathed, she
didn't see why she should make any particular effort to console Penny,
just because his little flirtation with Genevieve had stopped with a
bump.

Even the ride home in the moonlight didn't help much. Genevieve sat
beside George on the front seat, and between them there stretched a
tense, tragic silence. In the back seat with Penfield Evans, and in the
intervals of frustrating his attempts to hold her hand, Betty considered
how frightfully silly young married couples could be over microscopic
differences.

But Betty was wrong here and the married pair on the front seat were
right.

Just reflect for a minute what Genevieve's George was. He was her
knight, her Bayard, her thoroughly Tennysonian King Arthur. The basis of
her adoration was that he should remain like that. You can see then
what a staggering experience it was to have caught herself, even for a
minute, in the act of smiling over him as sulky and absurd.

And think of George's Genevieve! A saint enshrined, that his soul could
profitably bow down before whenever it had leisure to escape from the
activities of a wicked world. Fancy his horror over the mere suspicion
that she could be indifferent to his wishes--his comfort--even his
health, because of a mere tomboy flirtation with a man who could swim
better than he could! Most women were like that, he knew--vain, shallow,
inconstant creatures! But was not his pearl an exception? It was
horrible to have to doubt it.

By three o'clock the next morning, after many tears and much grave
discourse, they succeeded in getting these doubts to sleep--killing
them, they'd have said, beyond the possibility of resurrection. It was
the others who had made all the trouble. If only they could have the
world to themselves--no Cousin Emelene, no Alys Brewster-Smith, no
Penfield Evans and Betty Sheridan, with their frivolity and low ideals,
to complicate things! An Arcadian Island in some Aeonian Sea.

"Well," he said hopefully, "our home can be like that. It shall be like
that, when we get rid of Alys and her