since the accident in the bull-ring. Suzee
had recovered from the shock with a few day's rest and care, and as
soon as she was better we had started on a tour through the country
places of Mexico, and as it grew colder we had worked downwards to the
gulf of Vera Cruz in the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, and now were
making a stay here on the coast, caught by the beauty of palm and sea
and shore.

Suzee, though apparently she had all that most young women covet, had
been for some time restless and dissatisfied, and the reason soon
appeared in conversations like that of to-day.

"Come along," I said, getting up; "see what a lovely evening it is,
let's go for a walk along the seashore."

Suzee looked round at the translucent green bell of the sky that hung
over us, disapprovingly.

"It's always fine weather," she said, rather sulkily; "and there's
nothing to see on that old shore."

"Nothing to see!" I exclaimed in sheer amazement. Then I stopped
short, remembering her indifference to all I valued, and added: "There
are most beautiful shells of every shape and colour, wouldn't you like
to get some of those?"

Suzee's face brightened immediately. This idea took her fancy at once.
It appealed to her keen love of material things. Beauty in air and sky
was nothing to her; but something she could pick up and handle, become
possessed of, like the shells, deeply interested her. She rose at
once.

"I had better take a basket, Treevor," she said, "to carry them back
in." And while she went to get it, I leant over the balcony-rail
musing on that great difference in character between woman and woman,
man and man. Humanity might almost be divided into those two great
parts--those who love and live in ideas; and those who love, and are
wholly concerned with, material things.

She came back in a moment with a basket swinging in her hand. It had
not seemed so necessary here in Mexico that she should dress in
Western clothes, so she had gradually relapsed into her gaily coloured
silks and embroidered muslins and Zouave jackets. This style of
dressing suited the tropical climate, and the convenances of Europe
and America were too far off for anything to matter much here. It gave
her constant occupation, too, the making of her costumes; for she was
marvellously quick and dexterous with her needle, and if I gave her
the silks she fancied she made them into dainty forms and embroidered
them with the greatest skill. As she came bac