k now with her basket the
light fell softly on her lilac silk, all worked with gold thread, and
on her pretty bare head with its block of black shining hair.

We started for the shore, Suzee all animation now and chattering on
the possibility of sewing sea-shells into gold tissue or muslin.

The sky all round and overhead was palest green and strangely
luminous, the sea before us stretched to the far horizon in tones of
gentlest mauve and violet, beneath our feet was the firm brown sand
for miles and miles unrolled like a glossy, sepia carpet. On one side
broke the tiny waves in undulating lines of white; on the other, the
wild sand-dunes, grown over with rough grass and waving cocoanut
palms, came down towards the sea.

We walked on, both contented. I, in the strange colouring and the warm
salt breath in the air, that stirred the palm leaves till they tossed
joyfully in it; she, in the absorbing pursuit of the shells which lay
along the sand, positively studding it, like jewels, with colour. The
tide had recently gone down over the shore where we walked and left
them radiant, gleaming with moisture in the low light of the sun, pink
and scarlet, deepest purple and gold. She ran ahead of me, picking
them up and filling her basket rapidly. I walked on slowly, thinking,
while my eyes wandered over that shining, palpitating, gently heaving
violet sea. She had given herself to me entirely--and what beauty she
had to give! And yet she had failed to chain me to her in any way,
greatly though she pleased my senses. It is, after all, something in
the soul of a woman, in her inner self, that has the power of throwing
an anchor into our soul and holding it captive. Mere beauty throws its
anchor into the flesh, and after a time the flesh gives way.

In a little while Suzee came running back to me; her basket was full
to overflowing: she was quite happy.

"Take me up in your arms and kiss me," she said. "Look, Treevor, we
are all alone. What a great, great beach it is here, with not another
soul to see anywhere."

As she said, the firm brown plain of glistening sand stretched behind
us and before us with not another footfall to disturb its silence,
the wide white sand-dunes were deserted, the palms tossed their
greeting to the sea through the glory of calm evening light.

"Let us lie under those palms now; I am tired," she said as I kissed
her. And we went together and lay down under the palms on a ragged
tussock of grass, a