She shook her head. "Oh, you don't know," she returned. "I couldn't leave grandpa. Oh, Floyd, if you knew how it hurts me to tell papa that I must stay here! He does not understand. He will say, 'I want my little girl: you can't guess how badly I want my little girl.'" She finished with a great sob which shook her from head to foot. I pitied her very much, and I could easily comprehend that she was too delicate still to be allowed to have any sort of trouble. So I asked her to go down to the shore with me, and while we went I told her all the funny things I could remember until I made her laugh. She was quick and sympathetic; and her spirit was so strong, yet so repressed, that the moment she was really glad it seemed to have the exuberance of a bird's joy at freedom after imprisonment. I have reason, beyond that of mere admiration for its admirable picturesqueness, to remember and note down the form of the shore at The Headlands. The house stood on the highest part of the promontory, and there was a gradual descent to the end of the bluff, which terminated in a line of black rocks, some of which were firmly embedded in the soil, while others lay piled above each other as they had been tossed by some horrible convulsion of the sea. In one place there was a perpendicular precipice of eighty feet, washed by the waves at its base; but the beach was easily accessible from every other point, although in some places the descent needed sure feet and agile limbs. But I had always been the best climber in Belfield, and I ran up and down the rocks now with the ease of a monkey, until Helen begged me not to terrify her by any new exploits. Under the frowning citadel of rocks the beach was particularly fine, well pebbled below watermark and above a strip of shining sand. The tide was coming in with a strong dull roar, and every wave broke on the shore with curling cataracts of foam and a voice like thunder. It was hard for me to realize that above us on the headland the mild October sunshine was gilding and reddening the trees, for here we were in shadow, and the cry of storm and the din of tempest were in our ears. Yet beyond the bar opaline tints were playing along the sunlit sea, and the luminous, shifting-hued swell of crested waves merged into the iridescent sky. There was a secret and a mystery about the scene to me. I could not understand its influence upon me, and felt under a spell as I gazed at the distant white sails and listened to the roar of the waves as if I could never hear it enough.