She said, feeling suddenly stupid and childish, and knowing she was
speaking stupidly: "Would you not rather join Gladys again? I thought
that--that--"

"Thought _what_?"

"Nothing," she said, furious at herself; "I am going to the showers.
Good-bye."

"Good-bye," he said, troubled--"unless we walk to the pavilion
together--"

"But you are going in again; are you not?"

"Not unless you do."

"W-what have I to do with it, Captain Selwyn?"

"It's a big ocean--and rather lonely without you," he said so seriously
that she looked around again and laughed.

"It's full of pretty girls just now. Plunge in, my melancholy friend.
The whole ocean is a dream of fair women to-day."

"'If they be not fair to me, what care I how fair they be,'" he
paraphrased, springing to his feet and keeping step beside her.

"Really, that won't do," she said; "much moonlight and Gladys and the
Minster twins convict you. Do you remember that I told you one day in
early summer--that Sheila and Dorothy and Gladys would mark you for
their own? Oh, my inconstant courtier, they are yonder!--And I absolve
you. Adieu!"

"Do you remember what _I_ told _you_--one day in early summer?" he
returned coolly.

Her heart began its absurd beating again--but now there was no trace of
pain in it--nothing of apprehension in the echo of the pulse either.

"You protested so many things, Captain Selwyn--"

"Yes; and one thing in particular. You've forgotten it, I see." And he
looked her in the eye.

"No," she said, "you are wrong. I have not forgotten."

"Nor I."

He halted, looking out over the shining breakers. "I'm glad you have not
forgotten what I said; because, you see, I'm forbidden to repeat it. So
I shall be quite helpless to aid you in case your memory fails."

"I don't think it will fail," she said, looking at the flashing sea. A
curious tingling sensation of fright had seized her--something entirely
unknown to her heretofore. She spoke again because frightened; the
heavy, hard pulse in breast and throat played tricks with her voice and
she swallowed and attempted to steady it: "I--if--if I ever forget, you
will know it as soon as I do--"

Her throat seemed to close in a quick, unsteady breath; she halted, both
small hands clinched:

"_Don't_ talk this way!" she said, exasperated under a rush of
sensations utterly incomprehensible--stinging, confused emotions that
beat chaotic time to the clamour of her pulses. "Why d-do you speak