“Anyone can.”

“Well, will you?”

“Indeed I will.” (It was a vow.) “And now I must go.  I have to drive myself home in an open car, and the tourists do stare at one so—­in fancy dress.”

“Yes, but when am I to see you again?  I leave Newport to-night.”

“Telephone me—­2079—­and we’ll arrange to do something this afternoon.”

“And whom shall I ask for?”

“Telephone at two-fifteen to the minute, and I’ll answer the telephone myself.”

She evidently rather enjoyed the mystery of their not knowing each other’s names.  But a black idea occurred to Ben.  She had slid off the raft and swum a few strokes before he shouted to her: 

“Look here.  Your name isn’t Eugenia, is it?”

She waved her hand.  “No, I’m Crystal,” she called back.

“Good-by, Crystal.”

This time she did not wave, but, swimming on her side with long, easy strokes, she gave him a sweet, reassuring look.

After she had gone he lay down on the raft with his face buried in his arms.  A few moments before he had thought he could never see enough of the sunrise and the sea, but now he wanted to shut it out in favor of a much finer spectacle within him.  So this was love.  Strange that no one had ever been able to prepare you for it.  Strange that poets had never been able to give you a hint of its stupendous inevitability.  He wondered if all miracles were like that—­so simple—­so—­

Suddenly he heard her voice near him.  He lifted his head from his arms.  She was there in the water below him, clinging to the raft with one hand.

“I just came back to tell you something,” she said.  “I thought you ought to know it before things went any farther.”

He thought, “Good God! she’s in love with some one else!” and the horror of the idea made him look at her severely.

“I’m not perhaps just as I seem—­I mean my views are rather liberal.  In fact”—­she brought it out with an effort—­“I’m almost a socialist.”

The relief was so great that Ben couldn’t speak.  He bent his head and kissed the hand that had tempted him a few hours before.

She did not resent his action.  Her special technique in such matters was to pretend that such little incidents hardly came into the realm of her consciousness.  She said, “At two-fifteen, then,” and swam away for good.

Later in the day a gentleman who owned both a bathing house and a bathing suit on Bailey’s beach was showing the latter possession to a group of friends.

“No one can tell me that Newport isn’t damp,” he said.  “I haven’t been in bathing for twenty-four hours, and yet I can actually wring the water out of my suit.”

CHAPTER II

That same morning, about ten o’clock, Mr. William Cord was shut up in the study of his house—­shut up, that is, as far as entrance from the rest of the house was concerned, but very open as to windows looking out across the grass to the sea.  It was a small room, and the leather chairs which made up most of its furnishings were worn, and the bookshelves were filled with volumes like railroad reports and Poor’s Manual, but somehow the total effect of the room was so agreeable that the family used it more than Mr. Cord liked.