silver; and you keep
looking and looking until you scarcely know whether it's really
beginning to turn a little gray or whether it's only a lighter colour at
the temples. How insipid is a mere boy after such a man as Captain
Selwyn! . . . I have dreamed of such a man--several times."

The Minster twins gazed soulfully at the Atlantic; Eileen Erroll bit her
under lip and stood up suddenly. "Come on," she said; joined her hands
skyward, poised, and plunged. One after another the others followed and,
rising to the surface, struck out shoreward.

On the sunlit sands dozens of young people were hurling tennis-balls at
each other. Above the beach, under the long pavilions, sat mothers and
chaperons. Motors, beach-carts, and victorias were still arriving to
discharge gaily dressed fashionables--for the hour was early--and up and
down the inclined wooden walk leading from the bathing-pavilion to the
sands, a constant procession of bathers passed with nod and gesture of
laughing salutation, some already retiring to the showers after a brief
ocean plunge, the majority running down to the shore, eager for the
first frosty and aromatic embrace of the surf rolling in under a
cloudless sky of blue.

As Eileen Erroll emerged from the surf and came wading shoreward through
the seething shallows, she caught sight of Selwyn sauntering across the
sands toward the water, and halted, knee-deep, smilingly expectant,
certain that he had seen her.

Gladys Orchil, passing her, saw Selwyn at the same moment, and her
clear, ringing salute and slender arm aloft, arrested his attention; and
the next moment they were off together, swimming toward the sponson
canoe which Gerald had just launched with the assistance of Sandon Craig
and Scott Innis.

For a moment Eileen stood there, motionless. Knee-high the flat ebb
boiled and hissed, dragging at her stockinged feet as though to draw her
seaward with the others. Yesterday she would have gone, without a
thought, to join the others; but yesterday is yesterday. It seemed to
her, as she stood there, that something disquieting had suddenly come
into the world; something unpleasant--but indefinite--yet sufficient to
leave her vaguely apprehensive.

The saner emotions which have their birth in reason she was not ignorant
of; emotion arising from nothing at all disconcerted her--nor could she
comprehend the slight quickening of her heart-beats as she waded to the
beach, while every receding film of wat