“Look at me!” she commanded, and he obeyed.

He saw her pale skin, which the touch of the sun seemed to have no power to burn or coarsen.  The clear, wonderful eyes, the delicate eyebrows, the masses of dark hair, the scarlet lips.  He saw her white throat swelling underneath her muslin blouse.  The daintiness of her gown, airy and simple, yet fresh from a Paris workshop.  The stockings and shoes, exquisite, but strangely out of place with their high heels buried in the sand.

“How do I know,” she demanded, “that I am not one of the children of the cities, that I was not fashioned and made for the gas-lit life, to eat unreal food at unreal hours, and feed my brain upon the unreal epigrams of the men whom you would call decadents.  Two days here, a week—­very well.  In a month I might be bored.  Who shall guarantee me against it?”

“No one,” he answered.  “And yet there is something in your blood which calls for the truth, which hates the shams, which knows real beauty.  Why don’t you try and cultivate it?  In your heart you know where the true things lie.  Consider!  Every one with great wealth can make or mar many lives.  You enter the world almost as a divinity.  Your wealth is reckoned as a quality.  What you do will be right.  What you condemn will be wrong.  It is a very important thing for others as well as yourself, that you should see a clear way through life.”

A moment’s intense dejection seized upon her.  The tears stood in her eyes as she looked away from him.

“Who is there to show it me?” she asked.  “Who is there to help me find it?”

“Not those friends whom you have left to play bridge in a room with drawn curtains at this hour of the day,” he answered.  “Not your stepmother, or any of her sort.  Try and realize this.  Even the weakest of us is not dependent upon others for support.  There is only one sure guide.  Trust yourself.  Be faithful to the best part of yourself.  You know what is good and what is ugly.  Don’t be coerced, don’t be led into the morass.”

She looked at him and laughed gaily.  Her mood had changed once more with chameleon-like swiftness.

“It is all very well for you,” she declared.  “You are six foot four, and you look as though you could hew your way through life with a cudgel.  One could fancy you a Don Quixote amongst the shams, knocking them over like ninepins, and moving aside neither to the right nor to the left.  But what is a poor weak girl to do?  She wants some one, Mr. Andrew, to wield the cudgel for her.”

It was several seconds before he turned his head.  Then he found that, although her lips were laughing, her eyes were longing and serious.  She sprang suddenly to her feet and leaned towards him.

“This is the most delightful nonsense,” she whispered.  “Please!”