So they went along, very happy, laughing and talking together, viewed with envy, contempt or sympathy by the girls and women who read and worked round the band-stand. A thin stream of music drifted out with a sort of melancholy sprightliness to join the deep sound of waves breaking and drawing back from the gravel on the sands. In the distance Caroline looked out from her little window at Wilson's broad back and hated them both, in spite of Laura's kindness. They'd everything--everything. What right had one girl to have so much more than another? . . . Then a bevy of children came through the barrier, and when she next looked the lovers had vanished. But later in the morning when Wilson returned home alone by way of the promenade, he glanced at Caroline in passing the barrier with the faintest renewed stirring of curiosity. Surely there must have been something--he couldn't quite have imagined it _all_ that night at the dance. Then he saw a bill near the gate announcing another dance this week, and that made him say lightly, as he went through the iron turnstile: "Shall you be at the dance on Thursday? You ought to wear that red dress again." "No, I aren't--I'm not going to wear the dress any more." She spoke rudely, abruptly--saying to herself that this was what she had expected. He read her thoughts with ease, smiling to himself, for he knew something about women. But as he looked at her closely in the strong light, he became aware of a velvety texture in her skin which is usually seen only in children. She had a powdering of freckles on her nose, and her pupils had dilated with anger until her eyes looked black; her head was very erect on her slim shoulders. He thought to himself that here were traces of the nymph after all---at least, here was a girl who might conceivably look like one by artificial light and in the right gown. And beyond that, he was vaguely conscious of something in her that was pliant yet unbreakable--or almost unbreakable--and which defied him and all the world. "What will your other cavalier say to that?" he said. "I expect he will want to see you take the shine out of all the other girls once more." "Excuse me. There is some one waiting to come through," said Caroline with immense aloofness. But inwardly she was furious with herself for feeling a just perceptible response to his virile personality and his absolute sureness. Anything he _wanted_---- Then she bent her mind resolutely upon a respected inhabitant of Thorhaven. "Yes, lovely day, isn't it?" she said. "I suppose you're full up with visitors?" The woman replied that she was full up, and furthermore that she would remain in the same happy condition until October, then said casually as she moved off: "I didn't know you were living servant with Miss Wilson. I suppose you'll stop there altogether when this job on the promenade is done?"