upcoming sun, the faint noise of the waters, the sharp crying of the gulls.

They had a warm hollow in the sandhills where the wind did not come. He stood looking out to sea.

“It’s very fine,” he said.

“Now don’t get sentimental,” she said.

It irritated her to see him standing gazing at the sea, like a solitary and poetic person. He laughed. She quickly undressed.

“There are some fine waves this morning,” she said triumphantly.

She was a better swimmer than he; he stood idly watching her.

“Aren’t you coming?” she said.

“In a minute,” he answered.

She was white and velvet skinned, with heavy shoulders. A little wind, coming from the sea, blew across her body and ruffled her hair.

The morning was of a lovely limpid gold colour. Veils of shadow seemed to be drifting away on the north and the south. Clara stood shrinking slightly from the touch of the wind, twisting her hair. The sea-grass rose behind the white stripped woman. She glanced at the sea, then looked at him. He was watching her with dark eyes which she loved and could not understand. She hugged her breasts between her arms, cringing, laughing:

“Oo, it will be so cold!” she said.

He bent forward and kissed her, held her suddenly close, and kissed her again. She stood waiting. He looked into her eyes, then away at the pale sands.

“Go, then!” he said quietly.

She flung her arms round his neck, drew him against her, kissed him passionately, and went, saying:

“But you’ll come in?”

“In a minute.”

She went plodding heavily over the sand that was soft as velvet. He, on the sandhills, watched the great pale coast envelop her. She grew smaller, lost proportion, seemed only like a large white bird toiling forward.

“Not much more than a big white pebble on the beach, not much more than a clot of foam being blown and rolled over the sand,” he said to himself.

She seemed to move very slowly across the vast sounding shore. As he watched, he lost her. She was dazzled out of sight by the sunshine. Again he saw her, the merest white speck moving against the white, muttering sea-edge.

“Look how little she is!” he said to himself. “She’s lost like a grain of sand in the beach—just a concentrated speck blown along, a tiny white foam-bubble, almost nothing among the morning. Why does she absorb me?”

The morning was altogether uninterrupted: she was gone in the water. Far and wide the beach, the sandhills with their blue mar-rain, fz the shining water, glowed together in immense, unbroken solitude.

“What is she, after all?” he said to himself. “Here’s the sea-coast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam. What does she mean to me, after all? She represents something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea. But what is she? It’s not her I care for.”

Then, startled by his own unconscious thoughts, that seemed to speak so distinctly that all the morning could hear, he undressed and ran quickly down the sands. She was watching for him. Her arm flashed up to him, she heaved on a wave, subsided, her shoulders in a pool of liquid silver. He jumped through the breakers, and in a moment her hand was on his shoulder.

He was a poor swimmer, and could not stay long in the water. She played round him in triumph, sporting with her superiority, which he begrudged her. The sunshine stood deep and fine on the water. They laughed in the sea for a minute or two, then raced each other back to the sandhills.

When they were drying themselves, panting heavily, he watched her laughing, breathless face, her bright shoulders, her breasts that swayed and made him frightened as she rubbed them, and he thought again:

“But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morning and the sea. Is she—? Is she—”

She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from her drying with a laugh.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“You,” he answered, laughing.

Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing her white “goose-fleshed” shoulder, and thinking:

“What is she? What is she?”

She loved him in the morning. There was something detached, hard, and elemental about his kisses then, as if he were only conscious of his own will, not in the least of her and her wanting him.

Later in the day he went out sketching.

“You,” he said to her, “go with your mother to Sutton. I am so dull.”

She stood and looked