blue, breaking ripples, their sh-sh as they were poured out on to the golden sand, white gulls hung in the air, white boats drifted over the sea. And by Madge's side sat her lover, the man whom her whole nature hailed as its complement, its completion. Whatever he did, whatever he said, she felt that she had herself dreamed that in remote days. Various and unexpected as were his moods, they were all fiery; the sand-castle as it first stood triumphant against the incoming tide had been to him a monument of more than national import, its gradual fall a tragedy that beggared Euripides. The bee, too--if he had been burying her he could not have shown a tenderer interest. But she was not so sure that she agreed with the sermon that had been preached over the grave. And in spite of the completeness of the noonday, she could not help going back to it. "Evelyn," she said, "were you really serious when you said that the honey-gatherer, who looked only for what was sweet, was the example of our lives? Something like that you said, anyhow." But he continued just looking at her, as he looked when he said: "You are adorable," with eyes gleaming and mouth a little open. He did not even seem to hear that she had asked him a question. But she repeated it. "I don't know," he said. "How am I to know whether I am serious or not? I suppose one says a hundred stupid things that are based on something one believes. I am only serious about one thing in the world." She did not affect not to know his meaning. "I know--we love each other," she said. "But we have breakfast and lunch just the same." He looked doubtful. "Do we?" he asked. "But they don't matter!" Suddenly to Madge the hush of the noonday and the arrest of "before and after" ceased. It was as if she had been asleep and was suddenly awakened from a dream by a hand that shook her. The dream was still there, but also, dimly, there was the wall-paper, a brass knob at the end of the bed, a counterpane. "Ah! with all my heart I wish they didn't matter. I wish nothing mattered, I ask for nothing better than to sit here with you, to go on living as we have lived this last week. But the time must come when we shall have to consider what we shall do next. Are we going back to London, or what?" "It is August," said he. "London in August----" "What then? Shall we stop here?" Then Evelyn was puerile. "Of course, if you are tired of this," he began. But she let the puerilities go no further. "Oh, don't be a baby," she said. "Ah, such a dear baby, I grant you! But, Evelyn, it is life we are living." Evelyn stroked his chin with a hugely pompous air. "'Life is real,'" he said, "'life is earnest.' Now, Madge, Poet Longfellow said that, therefore he must be right." "And so Painter Dundas agrees with him?" she said.