There were some new cumuli in the east, out above the water, and they began to take the late afternoon sun. Hortense cast about for just the right point of view, with Carolyn to help on "atmosphere" and two young men to be superserviceable over campstool, sketch-block and box of colors. She brought back a few dabs which may have served some future use;--at all events they served as items in a social record. Cope and Amy, with some of the others, strolled off in the opposite direction. The water remained smooth, and some of the men idly skipped stones. One of them dipped in his hand. "Cold?" he exclaimed; "I should say!" Amy looked admiringly at Cope, as one who had braved, beyond season, the chill of the great deep, and he tried to reward her with a "thought" or two. He had skipped stones himself between dips, and Randolph had made a reflection which he could now revise and employ. "See!" he said, as a flat, waveworn piece of slate left the hand of the young business-man and careered over the water; "one, two, three--six, eight--ten, thirteen; and then down, down, after all,--down to the bottom. And so we end--every one of us. The great thing is to crowd in all the action we can before the final plunge comes--to go skipping and splashing as hard and long and fast and far as we may!" A valuable thought, possibly, and elaborated beyond Randolph's sketchy and casual utterance; but Amy looked uncomfortable and chilled and glanced with little favor at a few other flat stones lying at her feet. "Please don't. Please change the subject," she seemed to ask. She changed it herself. "You sang beautifully," she said, with some return of warmth--even with some approach to fervor. "Oh, I can sing," he returned nonchalantly, "if I can only have my hands in my pockets, or waving in the air, or anywhere but on a keyboard." "I wish you had let them persuade you to sing another." She was not only willing to admire, but desirous: conscientious amends, perhaps, for an earlier verdict. "One or two more skips, you know, after getting started." "Oh, once was enough. A happy coincidence. The next might have been an unhappy one." "You have never learned to accompany yourself?" "As you've seen, I'm a rather poor hand at it; I've depended a good deal on others. Or, better, on another." She looked at him earnestly. "Have you ever sung to an obbligato?" "None of my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute--still I'm not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; that might be droll." He gave out a sort of dragging bleat. She did not smile; perhaps she felt such an approach to waggery unworthy of him. Perhaps she was holding him up to the dignity of the natural scene, and to the importance of the occasion as she conceived it.