There was a midsummer silence about the hotel in the early afternoon when Milly arrived. Yvonne, so the _patronne_ informed her, had taken the baby to the dunes, and thither Milly, without stopping to change her dusty dress, set out to find her. She descried her little Brittany maid on the sands safely above tide-water, and by her side a small white bundle that made Milly's heart beat faster. Virginia received her returned mother with disappointing indifference, more concerned for the moment in the depth of the excavation into the sand which her nurse was making for her benefit. Milly covered her with kisses, nevertheless, while Yvonne explained that all had gone well, "_très, très bien, Madame_." _Bébé_, it seemed, had slept and eaten as a celestial _bébé_ should. They were looking for Madame yesterday, but Monsieur had not been disturbed even before the _dépêche_ arrived.... And Monsieur was at his work as usual at the other madame's _manoir_. After a time Milly, wearied of bestowing unreciprocated caresses upon her daughter, left her to the mystery of the hole in the sand and sauntered up the beach. Dotted here and there in the sunlight at favorable points along the dunes were the broad umbrellas of the artists, who were doubtless all busily engaged in trying to transfer a bit of the dazzling sunlight and dancing purple sea to their little squares of canvases. To Milly this ceaseless effort to comment on nature had something of the ridiculous,--perhaps supererogatory would be a better word. It was so much pleasanter to look at the landscape, and easier! Offshore the dun-colored sails of the fishing fleet dipped and fluttered where the sturdy men of Douarnenez were engaged in their task of getting the herring from the sea. That seemed to Milly more real and important in a world of fact. Such a view betrayed the _bourgeois_ in her, she suspected, but according to the Hawaiian all women were _bourgeois_ at heart. After a time her feet turned into one of the lanes, and she followed unconsciously the well-known path until the gray wall of the ruined _manoir_ came in sight. She paused for a moment--she had not meant to go there--then impulsively went forward, crossed the empty courtyard, and finding the garden door ajar pushed it open. The drowsy midsummer silence seemed to possess both house and garden. The place was deserted. In the corner stood the painter's large canvas on the easel, with the brushes and palette on the bench by its side, as if just abandoned, and one of Madame Saratoff's large hats of coarse straw.