There they are, going out now; down the sandy path to the station; Theo bare-legged and bare-headed as usual, swinging a basket; off to buy jam, I expect, for the visitors’ tea; Blanche carrying letters. I heard his step on the cobbles ten minutes ago, and Mrs. Waters always rests in her room until three o’clock. The coast’s quite clear, then. Why shouldn’t I go out and have my bathe? I missed it this morning—thanks to all _that_! Perhaps the cool green waves of the Bay will help me to feel as if I’d washed a little of that memory away from me. Already it seems years since my last bathe; only yesterday morning! When the girls and I ran down together, to find him already in, practising walking under the water; and he’d called out “I say! Isn’t it topping to be alive on a day like this?” as he emerged, head up once more, dripping and glowing in his indigo-blue sheath, his hair sleek once more with the wet, his arms and shoulders as smooth and pinky-white as any of ours, but making ours look curiously slender and delicate. Years ago! Everything had been so different! I’d thought _he_ was so different. Well! This will be my last bathe for the summer, so I may as well enjoy it, all to myself. * * * * * I undressed quickly, slipped into my black woven silk club costume, and twisted round my head the long orange silk scarf that keeps my hair from getting too wet. I simply won’t take to one of those sponge-bag-like rubber caps that some girls still wear for bathing. They’re too unsightly for anything—and one doesn’t exactly want to look a blot on the seascape, even if there doesn’t happen to be anyone else bathing, to see one.... As it happened, I found, to my great annoyance, that there was someone else already in the little cove next to the cottages that it was Theo’s idea to christen “The Bay of _Many Waters_.” There was a smooth head, some distance out, dark against the afternoon glitter; a steady stroke that I knew. _Oh!_ So he’d come out first! Well, that meant that I couldn’t have my bathe here after all—just like him!... Fresh rage against him surged up in me as I caught up the white wrap of Turkey-towelling that I had thrown down upon a seaweedy rock with my string-soled shoes. I’d leave him to it. Perhaps I could get a dip in the next bay under that cliff where the wooden woman leaned forward to her watch? But, even as I turned to slip away, I heard a sound from across the water that seemed to make my heart, for a second, stop its beating. It was a choking shout for help. “Nancy!—Here!—Here!” Then that dark head disappeared under the water. It couldn’t possibly have been for as long as it _seemed_. No!