“No,” he said resentfully, and gathered driftwood for a fire, while she undressed in the darkness.... He saw her go in, crying out with delight at the water’s bitter coldness, and emerge, white and slender and dripping with silver moonlight, from the waves.... And this was the creature he had tried to make his wife! This seeker after strange and impossible beauty! He remembered that he had offered her, in some playful madness that day, a house. A house in the environs of Chicago! Thank heaven, she would never know that he had been in earnest. She had dried her body miraculously on the tiny tea-towel from their lunch-basket and resumed her clothes by the time his fire was alight, and she came up laughing and hungry, demanding food. He unpacked from the little basket the supper which their hosts of the tea-shop had prepared for them. She munched sandwiches while he broiled bacon on a stick over the blaze. “We could do this every night on the Dunes,” she said—and his heart leaped. “Rose-Ann,” he said. “Don’t torment me.” She took his hand. “Do I torment you?” she asked. “I don’t mean to. I’m sorry!” Was it surrender? he wondered—or some new evasion? “Our marriage—” he said. “Oh! Must we talk about it?” Her voice was wistful. “We’re so happy—as we are.” “As we are.... But what are we?” he demanded painfully. “Together....” she said. And then, when he did not speak, she asked, a little coldly, “What do you want me to say, Felix?” “I don’t know.... There are so many things to say.... All the things we haven’t said....” “Must we say them, Felix? Well, then—I’m sorry.” “For what?” “For everything.... Felix, if we had met each other for the first time _now_—” “Yes....” “We could be very happy, I think. Oh, I know we could!” “Have we hurt each other so much, then?” he asked sadly. “It’s not that.... All that was my fault.” “No,” he said. “Yes. I’ve thought everything out. And sometimes I think I’m not sorry that it happened. Because I’ve learned some things I didn’t know—about myself.” “Tell me.” “I’d rather not.... Felix, I’m not the same person I was. I’ve found things in myself I’m frightened of. Don’t make me tell them....” “I wish you would.” “They’re not nice things, Felix.... I woke up last night hating you....” Her voice was shaken. “I’m sorry, Rose-Ann,” he said contritely. “You have a right to hate me.” “No,” she said. “It’s not what you think. It’s something else—something you’d never guess.” Suddenly she threw herself face down on the sand and began to cry. He put his hand on her shoulder. She drew herself away from his touch with a convulsive movement. He looked on, hurt and baffled and frightened. She sat up, seized his hand and pressed it desperately. “Why can’t I trust you?” she asked. He had lost all clue to her thoughts. “I wish I could help you,” he said. “I don’t know—perhaps I’m trying to fool myself again.... What are you really like, Felix?”