"Oh, certainly! Life is undoubtedly real and earnest, but what then? Am I never to talk nonsense any more? Shall we unbury the bee? Dear me, the unburial of the bee. How unspeakable pathetic and terrible! But what I have buried I have buried. So I shall draw your profile in the sand with one finger and all my heart." But she still remained serious. "Tell me when you have finished," she said. Evelyn was already absorbed. "With a helmet on," he remarked, "because she has to meet and defeat the realities of life, and the corners of her mouth turned down because life is earnest, and just winking with the other eye; the one you see, in fact, because she wants to signal to her friend, which is me, that it's all a huge joke really, only she mustn't talk in church." There was a compelling fascination for her in the nimble finger that traced a big outline so deftly in the sand, and since she was upside down to it, where she sat, it followed that she got up, and went round to see what manner of a caricature this was. Hopelessly funny she found it, and hopelessly like, so much so that she danced a war-dance all over the outline, and sat down again on the middle of her own face. "Now attend!" she said to her husband. "After you have ruined the picture of my life," said he. "It was more like you than anything. You are being consumed with moral responsibility for me. I object to that, you know; you can be consumed by your own moral responsibility, or you can consume it, like you consume your own smoke, but mine is mine." "Evelyn, am I your wife?" she asked. "I have reason to believe so. I was told so in church." "Very well--your conscience is kept in the kitchen; when I go to order dinner I look at it--I order more if we are likely to run short. So give me the cheque, please, there is a bill for conscience owing, and we must have a fresh supply." "I don't understand one word," said Evelyn, rubbing the sand off his legs preparatory to turning his trousers down again. "Not one word. Does it matter?" Madge's face grew quite grave again; smiles had spurted as with explosions from eyes and mouth when she saw his sand-sketch of her, but these had ceased. "Yes, it does matter," she said, "for unless you propose that we should remain at Le Touquet quite indefinitely, it will be necessary some day to become definite. I suggest that we should become definite now. Everything," and she dug impatiently in the sand with scooping fingers--"everything has been left at a tag-end. We can't forever leave things frayed like that----" Evelyn interrupted her. "Oh, I know so well!" he exclaimed; "the metal thing comes off the end of a lace, and you have to push it through the holes; a little piece only comes through, and what does not come through gets thicker and won't follow. Then one has to take it out and begin again." Madge leaned forward. "Yes, it is exactly that," she said. "That has happened to us. When that happens, what do you do?"