sight, he turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the ocean, halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the breaking Pacific surges.  Here he was surprised to see a little child, half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume, or running after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that chased each other over the wet sand, and only a little further on, to come upon Cara herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her round chin in her hands, apparently gazing over the waste of waters before her.  A sudden and inexplicable shyness overtook him.  He hesitated, and stepped half-hidden in a gully between the sand dunes.

As yet he had not been observed; the young girl called to the child and, suddenly rising, threw off her red cap and shawl and quietly began to disrobe herself.  A couple of coarse towels were at her feet.  Jarman instantly comprehended that she was going to bathe with the child.  She undoubtedly knew as well as he did that she was safe in that solitude; that no one could intrude upon her privacy from the bay shore, nor from the desolate inland trail to the sea, without her knowledge.  Of his own contiguity she had evidently taken no thought, believing him safely housed in his cabin beside the semaphore.  She lifted her hands, and with a sudden movement shook out her long hair and let it fall down her back at the same moment that her unloosened blouse began to slip from her shoulders.  Richard Jarman turned quickly and walked noiselessly and rapidly away, until the little hillock had shut out the beach.

His retreat was as sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his intrusion.  It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister.  In the South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins, but they had provoked no such instinct as that which possessed him now.  More than that, he swept a quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward.  From time to time the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not turn his head.  He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin.  He had not gone many yards before he heard the twitter of voices and smothered laughter behind him.  He turned; it was Cara and the child,—­a girl of six or seven.  Cara’s face was rosy,—­possibly from her bath, and possibly from some shame-faced consciousness.  He slackened his pace, and as they ranged beside him said, “Good-morning!”

“Lord!” said Cara, stifling another laugh, “we didn’t know you were around; we thought you were always ’tending your telegraph, didn’t we, Lucy?” (to the child, who was convulsed with mirth and sheepishness).  “Why, we’ve been taking a wash in the sea.”  She tried to gather up her long hair, which had been left to stray over her shoulders and dry in the sunlight, and even made a slight pretense of trying to conceal the wet towels they were carrying.