She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it, if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God! has never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I like to hope that this may count a little to my credit, in the ultimate auditing, for she was terribly alluring, this Margarita, and I am no more a stock or a stone than other men, I fancy. We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and there stood Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his hand held out to me eagerly, an anxious, an almost wistful look in his honest blue eyes. He was unusually but not unbecomingly dressed in faded blue serge trousers, too tight for the dictates of fashion, but quite telling in their revelation of his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading boots and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a collar. It was really quite picturesque altogether, and suited him excellently, as all rough-and-ready, notably masculine attire has always done. Curiously enough, he combines with this, when in evening clothes, the least resemblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an American; the price they pay, I suppose, for being quite the best dressed business and professional men in the world. I took all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked ten years younger than when I had last seen him. He had always been a steady, responsible fellow, you see, one of the men people put things on, and not particularly youthful for his age: a great help to him as a budding young lawyer. But now I saw the eyes we used to see on the football field in New Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the little worried yet patient intentness I knew so well at school when some one of those tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible then!) depended on him for a fair solution. They used to say so clearly, those honest eyes, that he hoped you agreed with him and that you felt his way was the best way, but that whether or not you agreed, he would have to do it, all the same. He had, as I say, his hand out, and I quickly put mine into it, somehow or other not losing Margarita's at the same time. As unconsciously as a child she reached out her other hand to him and we stood like boys and girls in a ring-game, Roger and I looking deep into each other's eyes and holding Margarita tightly. "Is it all right, Jerry?" he asked me earnestly.