"But why dress? I like that style on you.It's too much trouble to dress.""All right!" she cried gayly."We'll have a little informal dinner this evening.I love to feel the sand under my feet."He gathered the wood from the dry drifts above the waterline and kindled a fire.The salt-soaked sticks burned fiercely, and the dinner was cooked in a jiffy-- a fresh chicken he had bought, sweet potatoes, and delicious buttered toast.
They sat in their bathing suits on camp-stools beside the folding table and ate by moonlight.
The dinner finished, Mary cleared the wooden dishes while Jim brought heaps of the dry, spongy sea grass and made a bed in the tent.He piled it two feet high, packed it down to a foot, and then spread the sheets and blankets.
"All ready for a stroll down the avenue, Kiddo?" he called from the door.
"Fifth Avenue or Broadway?" she laughed.
"Oh, the Great White Way--you couldn't miss it! Just look at the shimmer of the moon on the sands! Ain't it great?"Hand in hand, they strolled on the beach and bathed in the silent floodof the moonlit night--no prying eyes near save the stars of the friendly southern skies.
"The moon seems different down here, Jim!" she whispered.
"It is different," he answered with boyish enthusiasm."It's all so still and white!""Could we stay here forever?" He shook his head emphatically.
"Not on your life.This little boy has to work, you know.Old man John D.Rockefeller might, but it's early for a young financier to retire.""A whole week, then?"
"Sure!For a week we'll forget New York."
They sat down on the sand-dune behind the tent and watched the waters flash in the silvery light, the world and its fevered life forgotten.
"You're the only thing real tonight, Jim!" she sighed."And you're the world for me, Kiddo!"She waked at dawn, with a queer feeling of awe at the weird, gray light which filtered through the cotton walls.A sense of oneness with Nature and the beat of Her eternal heart filled her soul.The soft wash of the water on the sands seemed to be keeping time to the throb of her own pulse.
She peered curiously into the face of her sleeping lover.She had never seen him asleep before.She started at the transformation wrought by the closing of his heavy eyelids and the complete relaxation of his features.The strange, steel-blue coloring of his eyes had always given his face an air of mystery and charm.The complete closing of the heavy lids and the slight droop of the lower jaw had worked a frightful change.The romance and charm had gone, and instead she saw only the coarse, brutal strength.
She frowned like a spoiled child, put her dainty hand under his chin and pressed his mouth together.
"Wake up, sir!" she whispered."I don't like your expression!"He refused to stir, and she drew the tips of her fingers across his ears and eyelids.
He rubbed his eyes and muttered: "What t'ell?""Let's take a bath in the sea before sunrise--come on!"The sleeper groaned heavily, turned over, and in a moment was again dead to the world.
Mary's eyes were wide now with excitement.The hours were too marvelous to be lost in sleep.She could sleep when they must return to the tiresome world with its endless crowds of people.
She rose softly, ran barefoot to the beach, threw her night-dress on the sand and plunged, her white, young body trembling with joy, into the water.
It was marvelous--this wonderful hush of the dawn over the infinite sea.The air and water melted into a pearl gray.Far out toward the east, the waters began to blush at the kiss of the coming sun.The pearl gray slowly turned into purple.So startling was the vision, she swam in-shore and stood knee-deep in the shallows to watch the magic changes.In breathless wonder she saw the sea and sky and shore turn into a trembling cloud of dazzling purple.A moment before, she had caught the water up in her hand and poured it out in a stream of pearls.She lifted a handful and poured it out now, each drop a dazzling amethyst.And even while she looked, the purple was changing to scarlet--the amethyst into rubies!
A great awe filled her in the solemn hush.She stood in Nature's vast cathedral, close to God's heart--her life in harmony with His eternal laws.
How foolish and artificial were the ways of the far-away, drab, prosaic world of clothes and houses and furnishings! If she could only live forever in this dream-world!
Even while the thought surged through her heart, she lifted her head and saw the red rim of the sun suddenly break through the sea, and started lest the white light of day had revealed her to some passing boatman hurrying to his nets.
Her keen eye quickly swept the circle of the wide, silent world of sand-dunes, marsh and waters.No prying eye was near.Only the morning star still gleaming above saw.And they were twin sisters.
Four days flew on velvet wings before the first cloud threw its shadow across her life.Jim always slept until nine o'clock, and refused with dogged good- natured indifference to stir when she had asked him to get the wood for breakfast.It was nothing, of course, to walk a hundred yards to the beach and pick up the wood, and she did it.The hurt that stung was the feeling that he was growing indifferent.
She felt for the first time an impulse to box his lazy jaws as he yawned and turned over for the dozenth time without rising.He looked for all the world like a bulldog curled up on his bed of grass.
She shook him at last.
"Jim, dear, you must get up now! Breakfast is almost ready and it won't be fit to eat if you don't come on."He opened his heavy eyelids and gazed at her sleepily."All righto----!Just as you say--just as you say." "Hurry!Breakfast will be ready before you can dress.""Gee!Breakfast all ready!You're one smart little wifie, Kiddo."The compliment failed to please.She was sure that he had been fully awake twice before and pretended to be asleep from sheer laziness and indifference.
The thought hurt.
When they sat down at last to breakfast, she looked into his half-closed eyes with a sudden start.
