"It's just the place for a soliloquy. Enter the heroine in a white cycling suit, having come for cobwebs. Why, yes, it was cobwebs I came for. But I'm not a cat, and I can't go up into the peak there after them. No doubt Leander will presently stop bleeding, and, if he doesn't, there are already more than enough boys in the world." She glanced up into the roof, a half smile on her face. Then she resumed her gaze at the sea, swinging her feet outside the door as she did so. "I always did think soliloquies were great fun," she said, aloud, "particularly if it's the heroine who is doing the talking. Now, I suppose I'm the heroine at Savin Hill; if I'm not, I mean to be, somehow. It's always best to be the heroine if it's possible. A second fiddle has its uses, but it's pleasanter to be first fiddle. I should just like to ask what you expect of a girl who has been a Carlsbad nurse for months,--expect of her when she gets out, I mean. You expect some kind of a fling, don't you? Very well; all right; I don't think you'll be disappointed. Just wait until the folks begin to come here, and until I begin to wear my new frocks. Of course Rodney Lawrence can't be counted now. He's out of the running. He is going to marry Carolyn Ffolliott, and be adored all the rest of his life. At forty he'll be a fat, self-satisfied wretch. "I hope there isn't anybody near enough to hear me." She looked about the big chamber, which now had very little hay in it. She inhaled the air, which was odorous with the ocean smell and the fragrance of a thicket of wild roses which grew among the rocks in front of the barn and slightly to the left. Nowhere do wild roses grow more rankly, more beautifully, than on the New England coast; the keen salt wind seems to stimulate them to a greater loveliness. She leaned back again upon the side frame of the door, and resumed her gaze at the sea. She had discontinued her monologue. A sail came floating along around the point of rocks that guarded the northern side of the cove. It was a small craft, a tiny, sky-blue yacht, in which sat one man holding the tiller as he leaned back in a half-reclining position, his eyes scanning the shore, but scanning it lazily, and not as though he expected to see anything familiar. The wind was light and puffy, and sometimes the boat seemed as if it would stop, swinging slowly over the waveless water. "I could manage a boat like that well enough," Prudence said to herself, "and it would be great fun, too. "I heed not if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise." Having repeated the lines, she suddenly leaned forward and said, "Ah!" with a quick, keen interest. The man in the boat was looking at her; he took off his cap and waved it.