over it in winter when the
wind is strong from the east, and among the trees are frequent
skeletons, dead fruit trees these many seasons past, with the tortured
look peculiar to blasted trees, menacing the sky with gaunt, impotent
arms. After struggling along this bit, stopping every few minutes to
shake the shells out of my shoes, I came to uneven ground, soft green
grass, and beautiful trees--a truly lovely part at the foot of the
southern hill. Here I sat down for a moment to take the last shells out
of my shoes and to drink things in. I had not seen a soul since the
bathing girls, and supposed that most of the people staying at the inn
would not care on hot afternoons to walk over the prickly grass and
shells that must be walked over before reaching the green coolness of
the end. And while I was comfortably supposing this and shaking my shoe
slowly up and down and thinking how delightful it was to have the
charming place to myself, I saw a young man standing on a rock under the
east cliff of the hill in the very act of photographing the curving
strip of land, with the sea each side of it, and myself in the middle.

Now I am not of those who like being photographed much and often. At
intervals that grow longer I go through the process at the instant
prayers of my nearest and dearest; but never other than deliberately,
after due choice of fitting attitude and garments. The kodak and the
instantaneous photograph taken before one has had time to arrange one's
smile are things to be regarded with abhorrence by every woman whose
faith in her attractions is not unshakeable. Movements so graceful that
the Early Victorians would have described them as swan-like--those Early
Victorians who wore ringlets, curled their upper lips, had marble brows,
and were called Georgiana--movements, I say, originally swan-like in
grace, are translated by the irreverent snap-shot into a caricature that
to the photographed appears not even remotely like, and fills the
photographed's friends with an awful secret joy. 'What manner of young
man is this?' I asked myself, examining him with indignation. He stood
on the rock a moment, looking about as if for another good subject, and
finally his eye alighted on me. Then he got off his rock and came
towards me. 'What manner of young man is this?' I again asked myself,
putting on my shoe in haste and wrath. He was coming to apologise, I
supposed, having secured his photograph.

He was. I sat gazing s