“Thought what?”

“Nothing,” she said, furious at herself; “I am going to the showers.  Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he said, troubled—­“unless we walk to the pavilion together—­”

“But you are going in again; are you not?”

“Not unless you do.”

“W-what have I to do with it, Captain Selwyn?”

“It’s a big ocean—­and rather lonely without you,” he said so seriously that she looked around again and laughed.

“It’s full of pretty girls just now.  Plunge in, my melancholy friend.  The whole ocean is a dream of fair women to-day.”

“‘If they be not fair to me, what care I how fair they be,’” he paraphrased, springing to his feet and keeping step beside her.

“Really, that won’t do,” she said; “much moonlight and Gladys and the Minster twins convict you.  Do you remember that I told you one day in early summer—­that Sheila and Dorothy and Gladys would mark you for their own?  Oh, my inconstant courtier, they are yonder!—­And I absolve you.  Adieu!”

“Do you remember what I told you—­one day in early summer?” he returned coolly.

Her heart began its absurd beating again—­but now there was no trace of pain in it—­nothing of apprehension in the echo of the pulse either.

“You protested so many things, Captain Selwyn—­”

“Yes; and one thing in particular.  You’ve forgotten it, I see.”  And he looked her in the eye.

“No,” she said, “you are wrong.  I have not forgotten.”

“Nor I.”

He halted, looking out over the shining breakers.  “I’m glad you have not forgotten what I said; because, you see, I’m forbidden to repeat it.  So I shall be quite helpless to aid you in case your memory fails.”

“I don’t think it will fail,” she said, looking at the flashing sea.  A curious tingling sensation of fright had seized her—­something entirely unknown to her heretofore.  She spoke again because frightened; the heavy, hard pulse in breast and throat played tricks with her voice and she swallowed and attempted to steady it:  “I—­if—­if I ever forget, you will know it as soon as I do—­”

Her throat seemed to close in a quick, unsteady breath; she halted, both small hands clinched: 

“Don’t talk this way!” she said, exasperated under a rush of sensations utterly incomprehensible—­stinging, confused emotions that beat chaotic time to the clamour of her pulses.  “Why d-do you speak of such things?” she repeated with a fierce little indrawn breath—­“why do you?—­when you know—­when I said—­explained everything?” She looked at him fearfully:  “You are somehow spoiling our friendship,” she said; “and I don’t exactly know how you are doing it, but something of the comfort of it is being taken away from me—­and don’t! don’t! don’t do it!”

She covered her eyes with her clinched hands, stood a moment, motionless; then her arms dropped, and she turned sharply with a gesture which left him standing there and walked rapidly across the beach to the pavilion.