She came back in a moment with a basket swinging in her hand.  It had not seemed so necessary here in Mexico that she should dress in Western clothes, so she had gradually relapsed into her gaily coloured silks and embroidered muslins and Zouave jackets.  This style of dressing suited the tropical climate, and the convenances of Europe and America were too far off for anything to matter much here.  It gave her constant occupation, too, the making of her costumes; for she was marvellously quick and dexterous with her needle, and if I gave her the silks she fancied she made them into dainty forms and embroidered them with the greatest skill.  As she came back now with her basket the light fell softly on her lilac silk, all worked with gold thread, and on her pretty bare head with its block of black shining hair.

We started for the shore, Suzee all animation now and chattering on the possibility of sewing sea-shells into gold tissue or muslin.

The sky all round and overhead was palest green and strangely luminous, the sea before us stretched to the far horizon in tones of gentlest mauve and violet, beneath our feet was the firm brown sand for miles and miles unrolled like a glossy, sepia carpet.  On one side broke the tiny waves in undulating lines of white; on the other, the wild sand-dunes, grown over with rough grass and waving cocoanut palms, came down towards the sea.

We walked on, both contented.  I, in the strange colouring and the warm salt breath in the air, that stirred the palm leaves till they tossed joyfully in it; she, in the absorbing pursuit of the shells which lay along the sand, positively studding it, like jewels, with colour.  The tide had recently gone down over the shore where we walked and left them radiant, gleaming with moisture in the low light of the sun, pink and scarlet, deepest purple and gold.  She ran ahead of me, picking them up and filling her basket rapidly.  I walked on slowly, thinking, while my eyes wandered over that shining, palpitating, gently heaving violet sea.  She had given herself to me entirely—­and what beauty she had to give!  And yet she had failed to chain me to her in any way, greatly though she pleased my senses.  It is, after all, something in the soul of a woman, in her inner self, that has the power of throwing an anchor into our soul and holding it captive.  Mere beauty throws its anchor into the flesh, and after a time the flesh gives way.

In a little while Suzee came running back to me; her basket was full to overflowing:  she was quite happy.

“Take me up in your arms and kiss me,” she said.  “Look, Treevor, we are all alone.  What a great, great beach it is here, with not another soul to see anywhere.”

As she said, the firm brown plain of glistening sand stretched behind us and before us with not another footfall to disturb its silence, the wide white sand-dunes were deserted, the palms tossed their greeting to the sea through the glory of calm evening light.