They followed the path of the valley past the groves of arbutus, past the emerald meadows down into the sandy waste over which the stream carried little pebbles to the sea, flowing over the wide shallows like a diamonded lattice. They plunged in the towans that never seemed to change with the seasons. They rested in the warm hollows under larksong. They climbed precipices and ran along ridges, until at last they raced gloriously down a virgin drift out on to the virgin sands on which, a long way off, the waves were breaking in slow curves, above them a film of spray tossed backwards by the breeze blowing from the shore. Jenny sat in the solitude, making a necklace of wine-stained shells. She was dressed in some shade of fawn that seemed to be absorbed by these wide flat sands, so that she became smaller and slighter. She wore a silver-gray bonnet set closely round her cheeks in a ruching of ivory. May was in scarlet and looked, as she lay there in the castness, not much bigger than Jenny's cap of scarlet stockinette, left long ago on the beach at Clacton. "Hullo, there's somebody coming along the sands. Can you see them?" asked Jenny. "A long way off?" inquired May, peering. "Yes, just a speck--now--where those rocks are. No, you're looking in the wrong place. Much further along," directed Jenny. "You _can_ see a way," said May. The figure drew nearer, but was still too far off for them to determine the quality or sex, as they watched the sea-swallows keep ever their distance ahead, swift-circling companies. "I wonder who it is?" said Jenny. "I can't ever remember seeing anyone on the beach before," said May. "Nor can I. It's a man." "Is it?" "Or I think so," Jenny added. "What a line of footmarks there'll be when he's gone past," said May. "It is a man," Jenny asserted. Suddenly she went dead white, flushed crimson, whitened again and dropped the half-strung necklace of shells. "I believe I know him, too," she murmured. "Shut up," scoffed May. "Unless it's Fuz?" "No, it's not him. May, I'd like to be alone when he comes along. Or I don't think I'll stay. Yes, I will. And no, don't go. You stay, too. It _is_ him. It is." Maurice approached them. He gave much the same impression as on the first night of the ballet of Cupid, when at the end of the court he raised his hat to Jenny and Irene. "I--I wondered if I should meet you," he said. His presence was less disturbing to Jenny than his slow advance. She greeted him casually as if she were saluting an acquaintance passed every morning: "Hullo." Maurice was silent. "Isn't it a lovely morning?" said Jenny. "This is my sister May." Maurice raised his cap a second time. "I wonder," he said, looking intently at Jenny, "I wonder if--if----" he plunged into the rest of the sentence. "Can I speak to you alone a minute?" "Whatever for?" asked Jenny. "Oh, I wanted to ask you something."