Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus.  But Anonyma went out in a mackintosh that gave her the “silhouette” of a Cossack, and a beautiful little tarpaulin sou’wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to give the boots every chance of advertisement.  The notebook was safe in a water-tight pocket.

She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea.  She reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore.  The furthest breakwater had seaweed like hair waving on the water.  At intervals it would seem to be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for deliverance from the grip of some monster.  And then the sea’s lips would close on it again.  The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were beaten into submission.  The tide was rather low, and not very far away a great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow quadrille.  There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be washed gracefully away.

“Lazy Nature!” said Anonyma reprovingly.  “To sketch such a scheme in a few careless lines.”

For the whole world was rain-colour.  There was no horizon to the sea, the downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow.  There was nothing but the porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand dune, sketched on the canvas of that pale day.

Anonyma perpetuated in her notebook her opinion of Nature as an artist.  On the whole, it was a flattering opinion.  Then she sat on the breakwater, and thought how fortunate she was to be able to think such interesting thoughts about what she saw.  How fortunate to enjoy thought and to cause thought!  How fortunate to feel oneself a member of the comforting fellowship of intelligence!  “It is much more delightful,” Anonyma informed the sea, “to be intelligent than to be beautiful.  Why do we all try to make our outsides beautiful?  There is competition in beauty, but there is brotherhood in intelligence.  To be clever is to share a secret and a smile with all clever people.”  A vision of the coast of the United Kingdom encircled by a ring of consciously clever Anonymas sitting on breakwaters, sharing each with all a secret and a smile, came vaguely to her.

She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.

And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her, appearing stealthily over a breakwater.  The face wore the grin that some people wear when they are doing anything with great caution.  This gave it a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in a theatre decoration.  The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after meeting Anonyma’s surprised eye for a second or two.