Chance is scarcely ever anything more than our aptitude to take advantage of circumstances. On the beach Leonor met a young and pretty woman, a young woman of the sort that one sees so many of, the sort whose dress and figure tell one nothing decisive. He might have gone on contemplating the melancholy death of the wave at her feet; but he was walking for this very purpose--to meet a woman walking by herself: his desire created the chance. For a moment he was afraid that she was going to make advances, but she passed on. He followed. Skirting the water all the while, the young woman moved away from the frequented part of the sands. She tried to pick up a ribbon of weed, but it escaped her. Leonor reached it. Out of the water, it was a long vicious whip-lash. She thanked him, embarrassed by the present. "Throw it back, then. It's like most of our desires. As soon as one holds them fast, one would like to throw them back into the sea." She gave a little laugh, a sad, almost a smothered, laugh. "Oh! Not always," she said. They turned back toward the dunes and, seated on the sand, began to talk as though they were old friends. She looked at him insistently, though not appearing to do so. Finally she said: "You don't look like a nasty man." "Is that a compliment?" "In my mouth, yes." Then, little by little warming up, she talked without stop. It was a flood of words, like the mounting tide, only more rapid. She told him the story of her life. Leonor liked this sort of thing from ladies of equivocal reputations, and he now displayed a keen interest, putting in little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in making out: She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends, always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money during the summer The other, though he was older, gave less she liked him better--being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant. She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to be the department of Fine Arts. The first of these friends imagined that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil servant was at Honfleur. That complicated her correspondence a little, but it was better. Besides, she had had no opportunity of writing to the civil servant for a long time, for he gave signs of life only by an occasional post-card. That seemed to her suspicious and made her sad. When he had last written he was at Cherbourg, but he had given no address.