"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily. "I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her sandalettes. "Oh! I'll go on and gather shells, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amusement). The elder woman was of the type that, under such circumstances, makes no more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking off her hat. She was of that type--and of that build. They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's--hers and that girl's who had been Claudia Crane's. "Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach. "Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged aeroplanes above her. She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life. Olwen watched; anxious. But Claudia Cartwright was not to be caught in and swept away; not she. It was something else that was to be so lost; unseen by Olwen, unthought about at all. From where the bather's garments lay in a soft heap under a smooth heavy stone that she had set down to keep them from blowing away, there disentangled itself a ribbon that she had worn about her neck and that she had untied, carelessly, just before she ran down to plunge into the sea. It blew along the sands above the scatter of shells. It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away. CHAPTER XVI THE COUNTER-CHARM "Too old, by Heaven; let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart." Shakespeare. The two parties (those of the stag gathering and the dove lunch) returned to the hotel at almost the same moment, just before dinner-time. "_We've_ had a ripping time!" Mrs. Cartwright said gaily, in answer to an enquiry from Captain Ross; young Jack Awdas, hearing, gave her a reproachful glance. But there was no time for reproaches. Madame had announced "_On va servir!_" and there was a rush for rooms. But not before Awdas, at the door that was next to his own, had murmured urgently, "I want to talk to you afterwards, there's something that I _must_ say to you. Come down quickly, won't you?"