“I said, ‘Isn’t it a lovely morning?’”

“Oh—?  Yes, quite delightful.”

“Miss Ives—­but I’m interrupting you?”

Julie gave her book a glance and raised her eyes expectantly to Miss Carter’s face, but did not speak.

“Miss Ives,” said Miss Carter, a little confusedly, “mamma was wondering if you’ve taken the trip to Fletcher’s Forest?  We’ve our motor-car here, you know, and they serve a very good lunch at the Inn.”

“Oh, thank you, no!” said Julie, positively.  “Very good of you—­but I’m with the Arbuthnots, you know.  Thank you, no.”

“I hoped you would,” said Miss Carter, disappointed.  “I know you use a motor in town,” she answered daringly.  “You see I know all about you!”

Miss Ives paid to this confession only the small tribute of raised eyebrows and an absent smile.  She was quite at her ease, but in the little silence that followed Miss Carter had time to feel baffled—­ in the way.  “Here is Mrs. Arbuthnot,” she said in relief, as Ann came slowly in on the doctor’s arm.  Before they reached the table the girl had slipped away.

That afternoon she asked Miss Ives, pausing beside the basking group on the sands to do so, if she would have tea informally with mamma and a few friends.  Oh—­thank you, Miss Ives couldn’t, to-day.  Thank you.  The next day Miss Carter wondered if Miss Ives would like to spin out to the Point to see the sunset?  No, thank you so much.  Miss Ives was just going in.  Another day brought a request for Miss Ives’s company at dinner, with just mamma and Mr. Polk and the Dancing Girl herself.  Declined.  A fourth day found Miss Carter, camera in hand, smilingly confronting the actress as she came out on the porch.

“Will you be very cross if I ask you to stand still just a moment, Miss Ives?” asked the Dancing Girl.

“Oh, I’m afraid I will,” said Julie, annoyed.  “I don’t like to be photographed!” But she was rather disarmed at the speed with which Miss Carter shut up her little camera.

“I know I bother you,” said the girl, with a wistful sincerity that was most becoming and with a heightened color, “but—­but I just can’t seem to help it!” She walked down the steps beside Julie, laughing almost with vexation at her own weakness.  “I’ve always admired so—­the people who do things!  I’ve always wanted to do something myself,” said Miss Carter, awkwardly.  “You don’t know how unhappy it makes me.  You don’t know how I’d love to do something for you!”

“You can, you can let me off being photographed, like a sweet child!” said Julie, lightly.  But twenty minutes later when, very trim and dainty in her blue bathing suit and scarlet cap, she came out of the bath-house to join Ann and the doctor on the beach, she reproached herself.  She might have met the stammered little confidence with something warmer than a jesting word, she thought with a little shame.

“You’re not going in again!” protested Ann.  “Oh, CHIL-dren!”