At Caragh's words she turned her face towards him, with the vague depths of some conjecture in her eyes, as though disposed to ask him how, if not as an angel, he had ever thought of her. But she turned her eyes again, without speaking, to the topaz hills beyond the bay. Maurice lay a moment looking at her silent profile, then, standing in front of her, he spread out the wide white skirt fan-wise on either side of her feet. "Now you're perfectly symmetrical," he said, contemplating her from above. She lifted her eyes to his from the distant hills with a smile. "It would make a charming thing in marble," he continued; "almost Egyptian and yet so immensely modern. Only some fool of a critic would be certain to ask what it meant." "And what would you say?" He gave the statue a moment's further consideration. "Well, that it wasn't meant for him, anyway," he replied, dropping down again beside her. "Could you tell him what it meant for you?" she enquired, without moving. "Not to save my life," he said at once; adding, as if to reassure himself, "but I know." "You could tell me, perhaps?" she suggested presently. "Heavens, no!" he exclaimed. "You least of all. You'd think me crazy." "Oh, I think you that as it is," she admitted thoughtfully. He laughed, but with his eyes still occupied with the beauty of her bent figure. He filled his left hand absently with the little shells on which he lay, shaking them up and down on his open palm, till only a few were left between his fingers. As he dropped these into the other hand, his eye fell upon them. "I say! what dear little things!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Why didn't you tell me about them?" Lettice turned her head. "I thought you'd seen them," she said indifferently. "They're quite incredible," he went on, too absorbed in his discovery to notice her tone; "how is it that, with an ocean falling on them here, they're not ground to gruel. They make me feel more than ever an interloper. You should have moored me out in the boat: this floor was laid for naiads and fays and pixies; for nothing so heavy-footed as a man." "Or a woman," Lettice suggested, still seated as he had posed her, but watching his search among the pebbles with her chin against her shoulder. "Cover those number threes!" he said, without looking up from it, picking out the tiniest shells into a little pink heap upon his hand. "They're not number threes," she retorted; "and they have to carry _me_. You'd find them heavy enough if you were under them." He glanced up quickly at the half-hidden outline of the face behind her shoulder. "I daresay," he murmured. Something in the manner of his agreement brought the colour into her cheek, and, perhaps to hide it, she leant over towards him, and, propped on one elbow, began to search for the little shells and drop them into his hand.