The bather returned their joint gaze steadily from eyes that seemed, as Maxwell said, to smoulder under their long lashes, and to question her effect upon them in a way that he was some time finding a phrase for. He was tormented to make out whether she were a large person or not; without her draperies he could not tell. But she moved with splendid freedom, and her beauty expressed a maturity of experience beyond her years; she looked young, and yet she looked as if she had been taking care of herself a good while. She was certainly very handsome, Louise owned to herself, as the lady quickened her pace, and finally ran down to the water and plunged into a breaker that rolled in at the right moment in uncommon volume. "Well?" she asked her husband, whose eyes had gone with hers. "We ought to have clapped." "Do you think she is an actress?" "I don't know. I never saw her before. She seemed to turn the sunshine into lime-light as she passed. Why! that's rather pretty, isn't it? And it's a verse. I wonder what it is about these people. The best of them have nothing of the stage in them--at least, the men haven't. I'm not sure, though, that the women haven't. There are lots of women off the stage who are actresses, but they don't seem so. They're personal; this one was impersonal. She didn't seem to regard me as a man; she regarded me as a house. Did you feel that?" "Yes, that was it, I suppose. But she regarded you more than she did me, I think." "Why, of course. You were only a matinee." They sat half an hour longer in the sand, and then he complained that the wind blew all the warmth out of him as fast as the sun shone it into him. She felt his hand next her and found it still cold; after a glance round she furtively felt his forehead. "You're still thinking," she sighed. "Come! We must go back." "Yes. That girl won't be out of the water for half an hour yet; and we couldn't wait to see her clothed and in her right mind afterwards." "What makes you think she's a girl?" asked his wife, as they moved slowly off. He did not seem to have heard her question. He said, "I don't believe I can make the new play go, Louise; I haven't the strength for it. There's too much good stuff in Haxard; I can't throw away what I've done on it." "That is just what I was thinking, Brice! It would be too bad to lose that. The love-business as you've remodeled it is all very well. But it _is_ light; it's comedy; and Haxard is such splendid tragedy. I want you to make your first impression in that. You can do comedy afterwards; but if you did comedy first, the public would never think your tragedy was serious."