“Say to yourself--you won’t have to say it to her--just this: ‘I love her; I have always loved her. I always shall. I have done everything I have done for her, always, though I didn’t perhaps know it, and certainly did not admit it. It isn’t wrong to recognize it and it’s not wrong to admit it to myself; it’s merely a piece of honesty, and it’s an outlet for what would otherwise be suppressed and denied until it fouled and poisoned my whole life. At the same time this thing must be kept under control, just as any outlet must be controlled. I mustn’t let it, in its flow, do damage as great as it would in its stagnation--and a worse. I must be as honest as the day about it and as strong as I am honest.’” It was quite dark. The two sat there motionless for a while. Then Richard Hand got up and came toward the other man, offering him his hand. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was boyish and alive. “I think you have shown me a way out--if I am strong enough to take it and hold to it. I--I think I shall go and visit her--and find out.” The adviser gripped his hand and shook it warmly. “Go, by all means,” he declared. “Nothing is gained by denial of the truth; nothing is gained by suppression. Everything worth winning is won by fighting, and there is no impulse in us which cannot be bitted and bridled and curbed and made to serve us for a righteous end.” VI It was like an Old Home Week, Mary Vanton declared, when the three of them were all together on the ocean shore in front of the beach house. Dick had come down with the promise to stay a week and was living at the Coast Guard Station with Tommy. At least he was sleeping there and so, formally, Tommy’s guest. Actually he was Mary’s guest and all his hours were spent at her house or on the bay with her and the children, or in the surf with the children. Except for breakfast, which he and Tommy got for themselves, he ate at the Vantons’. Tommy, too, contrived to spend a good deal of time at the Vantons’ and to take rather better than half his meals there that week. Although as Keeper he remained technically on duty at the Coast Guard Station through the summer months, there was actually little for him to do. “It’s rather hard on the visitors,” he explained to Mary about his absences, “who come over in droves, mornings and afternoons, but even if I were there I couldn’t demonstrate the use of the apparatus myself without the aid of any of my crew.” The three sat regarding the ocean in which the four children were frolicking. The two boys could both swim, but were wisely not attempting to do more than duck in and out of the breakers. “I think I shall stay here all winter,” Mary Vanton said, suddenly. The men looked at her, but neither spoke. “I have always loved the beach,” she went on, after a little hesitation. “I have always thought I should like to live here. We shall be comfortable and I think it will be good for the children.”