Keturah Vanton listened to her mother’s explanation silently. Tears stood in her eyes, but her anxiety seemed to be mostly for her mother. She asked her no questions but kissed her with fervour. Ten-year-old Guy heard what his older brother told him with the incuriosity of a person engaged in an intensive task of teaching a new dog old tricks. “Play dead, Dick,” he commanded. Dick obeyed by rising hastily and loping away. At which six-year-old Mermaid burst out crying as if her heart would break. For some time afterward she appeared to entertain the appalling notion that her father had disappeared rather than play dead. Mary Vanton lost no time in settling her house in Blue Port and taking her family over to the beach. She and her husband had what was by no means the most expensive house on that sand barrier separating bay and ocean, though it had always seemed to both of them the most comfortable. It fronted squarely on the ocean, bulwarked and protected by a tall and grassy line of dunes. There were a half dozen bedrooms and, on the ground floor, two immense living rooms with fireplaces. The house was constructed with unusual care and was habitable even in winter. And it gave, to the everlasting joy of those whose home it was, on the veritable sea. For the eternal Atlantic, the “Western Ocean” of sailors, is a breeding ground of men. A cleanser and sweetener of continents and islands, the ocean of storms and the ocean of victories, at once the world’s greatest highway and the last, the perpetual frontier. A sight nowhere transcended! Mary Vanton often looked upon it. It renewed in her the sense of wonder, the sense of mystery, the feeling of hope, without which the soul is extinguished, without which the very heart of life dies. IV Tom Lupton got over to see the Vantons at least twice a week through the summer. And whether she was on the wide veranda or sitting under a beach parasol on the sand while the children bathed in the surf, Mary Vanton was always glad to see him. Sometimes she found herself looking forward to his coming, and then she had a moment of hesitation and self-rebuke. Yet ... why should she not? She expected a visitor in September and contemplated his coming with a pleasurable interest, as she told Tom Lupton. “You’ll be glad to see Dick Hand again, won’t you?” she asked, as they sat on the beach together. “Why, sure,” Tom answered, with some surprise. “Is he coming out?” Dick was still in New York, a chemical engineer of tremendous reputation. His latest feat had been to develop some old and neglected patents that were his father’s. The rights had nearly expired when Dick got to work at them and made improvements that enabled him to re-patent them. He thought he was going to make a fortune--or another fortune. He had several already. “What are those patents of his, anyway?” asked Tom Lupton, rather perfunctorily.