"Not in this air. I feel as if I could walk forever." "How about a bit of a walk to-night--up to the bluff? Is it too late, Admiral?" "Not for you two. I'll finish my pipe, and read my papers." The young people followed the line of the bluff until they came to an open space which looked towards the east. To the left of them was the ridge with a young moon hanging low above it, and straight ahead, brighter than the moon, whitening the heavens, stretching out and out until it reached the sailors in their ships, was the Sankaty light. "I always come out to look at it before I go to bed," said Cope; "it is such a _living_ thing, isn't it?" The wind was rising and they could hear the sound of the sea. Becky caught her breath. "On dark nights I like to think how it must look to the ships beyond the shoals----" "The sea is cruel," said Cope; "that's why I don't paint it." "Oh, it isn't always cruel." "When isn't it? Last year, with the submarines, it was--a monster. I saw a picture once in a gallery, 'The Eternal Siren,' just the sea. And a woman asked, 'Where's the Siren?'" Becky laughed. "If you had sailor blood in you, you wouldn't feel that way. Ask Grandfather." "The Admiral is prejudiced. He loves--the siren----" "He would tell you that the sea isn't a siren. It's a bold, blustering lass like the Whistling Sally out there in the front yard. Man has tamed her even if he hasn't quite mastered her." "He will never master her. She will go on and on, after we are dead, through the ages, wooing men to--destruction----" Becky shivered. "I hate to think of things--after we are dead." "Do you? I don't. I like to think way beyond the ages to the time when there shall be no more sea----" He pulled himself up abruptly. "I am talking rather dismally, I am afraid, about death and destruction. You won't want to walk with me again." "Oh, yes, I shall. And I want to see your pictures." "You may not care for them. Lots of people don't. But I have to work in my own way----" As they walked back, he told her what he was trying to do. As she listened, Becky seemed to have two minds, one that caught his words, and answered them, and another which went back and back to the things which had happened since she had last walked this bluff with the wind in her face and the sound of the sea in her ears. It seemed to her as if a lifetime had elapsed since last she had looked at the Sankaty light. II When Becky wrote to Randy, she had a great deal to say about Archibald Cope. "He is trying to paint the moor. He wants to get its meaning, and then make other people see what it means. He doesn't look in the least like that, Randy--as if he were finding the spirit of things. He has red hair and wears correct clothes, and says the right things, and you feel as if he ought to be in Wall Street buying bonds. But here he is, refusing to believe that anything he has done is worth while until he does it to his own satisfaction.