It was her more strictly feminine side that she exhibited that evening. There was nothing about her save the delicate tan of her skin to remind Merrington that the girl of the surf and sun-flooded beach was one with the dainty and charming woman in the trailing muslin, with the soft masses of her hair dark above the small head. “Why did you never mention to me your friendship with my cousin?” she asked him after dinner, finding herself for the moment alone with him in the dimly lit parlor. He answered with native frankness: “You never encouraged me to talk about myself, and, to tell you the truth, I never thought of anyone when with you--except yourself.” “Dick has been telling me of your long friendship.” “It has never brought me anything that I would less wish to part with than this pleasure to-night.” “I do not know,” she said, musingly, yet with a precision nearer akin to her former treatment of him than she had shown that evening, “that pleasures are what we should value most in our friendships. You remember what Burns says about them?” “Is that a hint or a threat?” he asked, smiling. She colored slowly and threw him a question that changed the subject. “Will you go with Dick and me to see the mob to-night? He does not know the delights of this place. Indeed, I think he came down resigned to boredom, until he met you.” She appealed to Brinton for confirmation of her remark as he sauntered in. “Don’t make me fib after a full dinner, Jack,” he protested. “Besides, it isn’t anything like what I expected.” “There,” she laughed, rising; “but now we are going to take you out and realize your expectations, Mr. Merrington and I.” As they walked along under the pulsing stars, the void of the sea broken before them in crested waves that gleamed ghostly, a strange disinclination for speech beset Merrington. The fact that he could, without any sense of restraint, rather with a feeling of intimacy that sent delirious thrills along his veins, be with Jacqueline as one sharing her mood and interest so surely that he turned to silence in preference to words, placed, as it were, a bewitching perspective to his love. The mood changed, indeed, by the time they reached the crowded portion of the board walk, for it was not Merrington’s nature to keep silence long in the midst of jollification, and the Saturday night spirit was abroad. Moreover, he suddenly found himself alone with Jacqueline. “I never had a brother,” she remarked, coming to a standstill by the railing of the walk, “but if they hold themselves any freer to do cavalier things than cousins, I am glad I hadn’t.” She showed annoyance in the glance she sent at the laughing party her cousin had joined. “Maybe he will leave them soon,” she added. “I hope not. I am sure he won’t. The taste of cousins and brothers is always poor, but it is to be depended on.” “You are right,” she said, severely. “He does not deserve to have us wait for him.”