The woman’s breast rose and fell, but there was tremendous control in her over herself, and she exerted some of it in her answer. “There is only one thing to do,” she assured him. “It is to sever everything that joins you with him, dead or alive. Do this: put the inheritance money in a trust. The income will care for--for Mrs. Vanton, completely: medical attendance, nursing, everything. Give her the house, give her every dollar, but leave! You can take every precaution to see that she is properly cared for but you must get away. You must have a physical and a mental escape. You have got to renounce the past and everything in the present that threads you to the past. You have got to get out into a sunlit world, a world of normal men and women, of fighting and playing and loving, of shops and homes, of marriage and children, of discomforts and hardships, adventures and trifling worries and happiness. At thirty you must act, you who have been passive and acted upon. You have a life to live. Live it. Oh, Guy, live your own life!” She turned away from him. Something in her voice galvanized him, communicated an electric thrill along the dead circuit of his nerves, startled him, shocked him from his inertia. He looked up quickly, took a step or two, and saw that she was crying. As if it were a reflex action he took two steps more and stood beside her, then put his arm timidly about her. For one instant she relaxed slightly, so that her weight fell upon the arm, then she was alive again and turned to him a smiling face with cheeks still wet. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” she assured him. “Why don’t you do this? You aren’t in trim, physically; that’s plain. You’re in need of conditioning, some sort of outdoor life, something that will harden you. And you need company, companionship. Why not stay here on the beach this summer and then through next winter with my father at the Coast Guard station? He can’t take you on as a surfman, of course, for you’d have to pass an examination. Though you might do that, a surfman has to have had several years experience as a bayman, too. But you could be a sort of volunteer member of the crew. You wouldn’t make any money but you won’t need any money. You’ll have bad hours, but fewer than you suppose. You won’t even have the ordinary loneliness, for you can’t take a beach patrol and you’ll always be out with one of the other men. And there’s Tommy Lupton--he’s here. You and he can travel together; you’re good friends. And Uncle Ho. Aunt Keturah can’t persuade him to leave the beach permanently. She says,” Mermaid smiled at the recollection, “she says that marriage with him has made no difference, that she sees him as often as ever.