But it pleased Claire in a totally different way. The immense concourse of people who flocked thither, by such easy modes of travel, from New York and Brooklyn and elsewhere, were an incessant source of interest. Their numbers, their activities, their enjoyments, kept her blood in a soft tingle. This brilliant and picturesque city by the sea appeared to her in the light of a delicious reparation. It was a long, splendid festivity, compensating her for those years of dire dullness passed but a few miles away. All her recent resolutions to spend a life of lowly quietude, had melted into thin air. The ambition to climb, to shine, and to rule was once more a dominant force within her being. It seemed to her as if she had flung away some sort of irksome disguise, and now beheld it lie like an ugly heap near at hand, while wondering, in the exhilaration of regained freedom, how she had ever chosen to shroud herself with its clogging folds. She bathed every day in the ocean, and acquired a richer fund of health on this account. Either with Sophia or alone, though more often the latter, she explored the whole wondrous little life-crowded island, in which every grade of human society, from lowest to highest, held for her its distinct representation. The two huge Iron Piers, jutting out into the surf and assailed by continual salty breezes, charmed her with their streams of coming and departing people, with their noonday lunchers, with their _table d'hôte_ diners, seated over cigarettes or coffee in the sweet marine dusk. She loved West Brighton, with its beer-bibbers, its gaudy booths, its preposterous exhibited fat woman, its amazing Irish giant, its games of strength or skill, and its whirling _carrousels_, where delighted children span round on wooden horses, cows, lions, or dragons, to the clamors of a shameless brass band. But Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, and the Oriental each afforded a steadier satisfaction. The delicate and lightsome architecture of these three hotels, with their myriads of windows, their _châlet_-like patterns of roof, gable, and chimney, and their noble outlooks upon the sea, grew dearer to her as the structures themselves became more familiar. She loved the fine sonorous music that pealed forth from the big deft-built pavilions, where troups of well-trained minstrels set many a brazen instrument to their capable lips, and would often find assembled thousands for their listeners, either in the long, salubrious afternoons, or in the breezy starlight and moonlight of those exquisite seaside evenings. Her observant eyes were never weary of watching, and they forever found something to watch. She soon acquired an extraordinary keenness in the matter of "placing" people at sight. Few points of manner, costume, or visage escaped her. She found herself classifying and arranging the vast crowds that she daily encountered. She became familiar with the faces of many who frequently disembarked from the loaded cars.