“Of course,” explained Irene, “it was a kind of hazy day.”

“But I think Miss Lamont deserves credit for keeping the haze out of it.”  King was critically examining it, turning his head from side to side.  “I like it; but I tell you what I think it lacks:  it lacks atmosphere.  Why don’t you cut a hole in it, Miss Lamont, and let the air in?”

“Mr. King,” replied Miss Lamont, quite seriously, “you are a real friend, I can only repay you by taking you to church this morning.”

“You didn’t make much that time, King,” said Forbes, as he lounged out of the room.

After church King accepted a seat in the Benson carriage for a drive on the Ocean Road.  He who takes this drive for the first time is enchanted with the scene, and it has so much variety, deliciousness in curve and winding, such graciousness in the union of sea and shore, such charm of color, that increased acquaintance only makes one more in love with it.  A good part of its attraction lies in the fickleness of its aspect.  Its serene and soft appearance might pall if it were not now and then, and often suddenly, and with little warning, transformed into a wild coast, swept by a tearing wind, enveloped in a thick fog, roaring with the noise of the angry sea slapping the rocks and breaking in foam on the fragments its rage has cast down.  This elementary mystery and terror is always present, with one familiar with the coast, to qualify the gentleness of its lovelier aspects.  It has all moods.  Perhaps the most exhilarating is that on a brilliant day, when shore and sea sparkle in the sun, and the waves leap high above the cliffs, and fall in diamond showers.

This Sunday the shore was in its most gracious mood, the landscape as if newly created.  There was a light, luminous fog, which revealed just enough to excite the imagination, and refined every outline and softened every color.  Mr. King and Irene left the carriage to follow the road, and wandered along the sea path.  What softness and tenderness of color in the gray rocks, with the browns and reds of the vines and lichens!  They went out on the iron fishing-stands, and looked down at the shallow water.  The rocks under water took on the most exquisite shades—­purple and malachite and brown; the barnacles clung to them; the long sea-weeds, in half a dozen varieties, some in vivid colors, swept over them, flowing with the restless tide, like the long locks of a drowned woman’s hair.  King, who had dabbled a little in natural history, took great delight in pointing out to Irene this varied and beautiful life of the sea; and the girl felt a new interest in science, for it was all pure science, and she opened her heart to it, not knowing that love can go in by the door of science as well as by any other opening.  Was Irene really enraptured by the dear little barnacles and the exquisite sea-weeds?  I have seen a girl all of a flutter with pleasure in a laboratory when a young chemist was showing her the retorts and the crooked tubes and the glass wool and the freaks of color which the alkalies played with the acids.  God has made them so, these women, and let us be thankful for it.