Jane Webster was trying to reconstruct something. In darkness she was trying to feel her way along the face of a wall. The wall had little sharp points sticking out that hurt the palm of the hand. If one followed the wall far enough one came to a lighted place. Perhaps the wall was studded with jewels, put there by others, who had groped their way along in the darkness. Her father had gone away with a woman, with a young woman, much like herself. He would live with the woman now. Perhaps she would never see him again. Her mother was dead. In the future she would be alone in life. She would have to begin now and make a life of her own. Was her mother dead or had she just been having terrible fancies? One was plunged suddenly down from a high safe place into the sea and then one had to try to swim, to save oneself. Jane’s mind began playing with the thought of herself as swimming in a sea. During the summer of the year before she had gone with some young men and women on an excursion to a town facing Lake Michigan, and to a resort near the town. There was a man who dived down into the sea from a tall tower, that had been stuck far up into the sky. He had been employed to dive in order to entertain the crowd but things had not turned out as they should. The day, for such an affair, should have been bright and clear, but in the morning it began to rain and in the afternoon it turned cold and the sky, covered with low heavy clouds, was heavy and cold too. Cold gray clouds hurried across the sky. The diver fell down from his high place into the sea, in the presence of a small silent crowd, but the sea did not receive him warmly. It awaited him in a cold gray silence. Looking at him, falling thus, sent a cold shiver through the body. What was the cold gray sea toward which the man’s naked body fell so swiftly? On that day, when the professional diver had taken his leap, Jane Webster’s heart had stopped beating until he had gone down into the sea and his head had reappeared on the surface. She was standing beside a young man, her escort for the day, and her hands clutched eagerly his arm and shoulder. When the diver’s head reappeared she put her head down on the young man’s shoulder and her own shoulders shook with sobs. It had, no doubt, been a very silly performance and she had been ashamed of it later. The diver was a professional. “He knows what he is about,” the young man had said. Every one present had laughed at Jane and she had become angry because her escort had laughed too. Had he but had sense enough to know how she was feeling at the moment, she thought she would not have minded the others laughing. * * * * * “I’m a great little swimmer in seas.”