"We shouldn't ask you if we didn't want you." "Then I'll come." They walked up the beach together. Becky was muffled in her red cape, Cope had a sweater under his coat. The air was sharp and clear as crystal. "How anybody can go in bathing in this weather," Becky shivered, as a woman ran down the sands towards the sea. She cast off her bathing cloak and stood revealed, slim and rather startling, in yellow. "She goes in every day," said Cope, "even when it storms." "Who is she?" "A dancer--from New York. Haven't you seen her before?" "No. Where is she staying?" "At the hotel." "I thought the hotel was closed." "Not for three weeks. There aren't many guests. This one came up a month ago. She dances on the moor--practising for some play which opens in October." "What's her name?" "I don't know. They call her 'The Yellow Daffodil' because of that bathing suit." The girl was swimming now beyond the breakers. Becky was envious. "I wish I could swim like that." "You can do other things--that she can't do." "What things?" "Well, be a lady, for example. That's not exactly cricket, is it, to draw a deadly parallel? But I don't want people like that dancing on my moor." CHAPTER XIV THE DANCER ON THE MOOR I Randy's letter had set Becky adrift. She was not in love with him. She was sure of that. And he had said he would not marry her without love. He had said that if she owned her soul she would think of Dalton as a cad and as a coward. It seemed queer that Randy should be demanding things of her. He had always been so glad to take anything she would give, and now she had offered him herself, and he wouldn't have her. Not till she owned her soul. She knew what he meant. The thought of George was always with her. She kept seeing him as she had first seen him at the station; as he had been that wonderful day when they had had tea in the Pavilion; the night in the music room when he had kissed her; the old garden with its pale statues and box hedges; and always there was his sparkling glance, his quick voice. She would never own her soul until she forgot George. Until she put him out of her life; until the thought of him would not make her burn hot with humiliation; until the thought of him would not thrill to her finger-tips. She found Cope's easy and humorous companionship a balance for her hidden emotions. And when Louise Cope came, she proved to be a rather highly emphasized counterpart of her brother. Her red-gold hair was thick and she wore it bobbed. Her skin was white but lacked the look of delicacy which seemed to contradict constantly Cope's vivid personality. She seemed to laugh at the world as he did. She called Becky "quaint," but took to her at once. "Archie has been writing to me of you," she told Becky; "he says you came up like a bird from the south." "Birds don't fly north in the fall----" "Well, you were the--miracle," Cope asserted.