Curiously enough it was she who at last gave him his opportunity to speak his heart. The children decreed it was time for their next bathe, and while they undressed in the shelter of the rocks, Graeme set about unpacking the tea-things and boiling the kettle. He watched, kneeling, the three slim forms scamper across the short stretch of sands in the sunlight to meet the incoming tide, and suddenly Miss Mayne joined him on the cliff. "I'll help you," she said; "I can watch the children from here and cut bread and butter at the same time. They are quite safe." Her manner was unconcerned; she spoke in the unrestrained note of comradeship, and stood watching the children capering in the sunlit waves, with the wind moulding her garments to her long limbs and drawing loose tendrils of her hair in careless, happy disorder across the curve of her cheek outlined against the sky. Graeme knelt observing her, suddenly tongue-tied. You can invent speeches to a goddess, aye, and deliver them effectively enough to a silent night of stars, but this radiant, composed girl was flesh and blood; he could almost see the warm vitality glowing through her skin. She needed no clap-trap speech about love such as fellows deliver in novels.... He rose to his feet. The wind and the sunshine and the sound of the sea seemed to sing and shout together. "Man! Here's your mate at last!" was the burden of the song. "Here's the goal of all your heart's desire; the haven of your soul's adventure! Look at her, shaped for you by incalculable forces and laws, beautified and perfected and handed down through infinite ages, to stand thus within your arms' reach. Yours, man, if you can but win her! Tell her, fool ... tell her." "I'm glad you came," said the fool, and his voice, husky and unfamiliar, startled him. A sound, distinct from the noises of wind and shore, obtruded upon his consciousness as he spoke, and the girl heard it too, for she wheeled sharply and stood staring, not at her companion, but back across the sheep-cropped turf. Two horses were approaching at a canter, near enough already for their riders' faces to be discernible. One was Josephine Smedley; the other, a vapid-faced young man in extravagant equestrian attire. They drew rein and approached the cliff at a walk, Miss Smedley waving her whip in greeting. Her companion touched his horse with the spur, holding it on the curb while it curveted effectively. "Topping day!" cried Josephine. "Watching the kids bathe, Mrs. Jakes?" Graeme heard the girl give a little gasp. She stood quite motionless for a few seconds and then, still staring at the rider, he heard her say in a low voice, as if speaking to herself: "This has gone far enough; it's got to stop." Miss Smedley's cavalier had rather overdone the spur business and was having considerable difficulty in controlling his horse, which was plunging and pulling some distance away.