But soon she began to develop character. At sixteen the doll look was wholly gone. Her face bore the stamp of her individuality; but it remained as exquisite, as colorful as a cameo, or like a pastel, so delicately flawless of feature, so perfect of natural coloring that the effect was startling. I have heard people say, meeting her, that she seemed unreal. And certainly, everywhere she went, she attracted unusual attention. This tragedy came--the mystery began--one August when Dianne was sixteen, I seventeen, and Drake twenty-three. We were at our summer home on the coast of Maine. Father was of a temperament which demanded a quiet life. I think, too, that with such a girl as Dianne, he found seclusion an added advantage. She could so easily have been spoiled; but she was not. A gentle little thing, sweet in the old-fashioned storied style, with all the sophistication of her age passing her by untouched. Mischievous she had always been since childhood, and she was human enough to be thrilled by the frequent offers of motion-picture tryouts and the like. Such offers inevitably came. We were not hermits. We spent our winters in New York City. Quietly, but we had many friends and the fame of Dianne's beauty spread. But father kept her unspoiled, and apart from it all. We often had friends at our summer home; but it chanced that this particular August there was no one but our family there. I recall the fateful morning of the fourteenth. There was nothing to mark it from any other morning--warm and cloudless, with a fresh breeze that rippled the water of the cove and set the whitecaps running outside. Father announced that he would be all day at a chemical experiment and not to disturb him. Drake, Dianne and I decided that we would take the dory and row out to Bird's Nest Island; fish a little; have a swim and a campfire lunch. We started soon after breakfast. It was not a long pull, for the island was only some two miles offshore. We found the sea outside smooth running, but brisk. The wide bow of the dory lifted and slapped as we headed into the whitecaps. Bird's Nest Island had, to my mind, always spelled romance. It was a tiny, rocky peak alone in the sea, an irregularly round island only a few hundred acres in extent. The fifty-foot peak was almost in its center. Gulls often hung around that little naked crag pointing skyward. A rocky, but gently sloping beach encircled all the island. There were trees and underbrush; and, queerly enough, a spring of fresh water. It was an uninhabited island, with all the romance of Robinson Crusoe hanging over it. From the rock peak one could stand and see all the circular island shore and the sea in every direction. As children we had come here with the grown-ups. We had placed a cairn upon the summit and erected a signal flag, then, ignoring the obvious shore of the Maine coast, had built a signal fire and prayed that its smoke might be seen by some passing ship which would come and rescue us.