My cousin has an indirect habit of mind. With all general and all personal things his desperation to get at them obliquely amounts almost to a passion; he could no more go straight to a crisis than a cat could to a stranger. He came off at a tangent now as he was sitting forward and scrutinising her first very creditable efforts to draw. "I just wonder," he said, "exactly what it was you _did_ come for." She smiled at him over a little jet of smoke. "Why, this," she said. "And hairdressing?" "And dressing." She smiled again after a momentary hesitation. "And all this sort of thing," she said, as if she felt she had answered him perhaps a little below his deserts. Her gesture indicated the house and the lawn and--my cousin Melville wondered just exactly how much else. "Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea Lady. "Beautifully," said my cousin with a faint sigh in his voice. "What do you think of it?" "It was worth coming for," said the Sea Lady, smiling into his eyes. "But did you really just come----?" She filled in his gap. "To see what life was like on land here?... Isn't that enough?" Melville's cigarette had failed to light. He regarded its blighted career pensively. "Life," he said, "isn't all--this sort of thing." "This sort of thing?" "Sunlight. Cigarette smoking. Talk. Looking nice." "But it's made up----" "Not altogether." "For example?" "Oh, _you_ know." "What?" "You know," said Melville, and would not look at her. "I decline to know," she said after a little pause. "Besides--" he said. "Yes?" "You told Mrs. Bunting--" It occurred to him that he was telling tales, but that scruple came too late. "Well?" "Something about a soul." She made no immediate answer. He looked up and her eyes were smiling. "Mr. Melville," she said, innocently, "what _is_ a soul?" "Well," said my cousin readily, and then paused for a space. "A soul," said he, and knocked an imaginary ash from his extinct cigarette. "A soul," he repeated, and glanced at Parker. "A soul, you know," he said again, and looked at the Sea Lady with the air of a man who is handling a difficult matter with skilful care. "Come to think of it," he said, "it's a rather complicated matter to explain----" "To a being without one?" "To any one," said my cousin Melville, suddenly admitting his difficulty. He meditated upon her eyes for a moment. "Besides," he said, "you know what a soul is perfectly well." "No," she answered, "I don't." "You know as well as I do." "Ah! that may be different." "You came to get a soul." "Perhaps I don't want one. Why--if one hasn't one----?" "Ah, _there_!" And my cousin shrugged his shoulders. "But really you know-- It's just the generality of it that makes it hard to define." "Everybody has a soul?" "Every one." "Except me?" "I'm not certain of that." "Mrs. Bunting?" "Certainly." "And Mr. Bunting?" "Every one." "Has Miss Glendower?" "Lots." The Sea Lady mused. She went off at a tangent abruptly.