“No, it is not exactly the same,” Lucy answered positively, as if she had made a life-long study of climate; “and if it were, the life is very different.  I love Warehold, of course; but you must admit that it is half-asleep all the time.  The hotel will be some change; there will be new people and something to see from the piazzas.  And I need it, dear.  I get tired of one thing all the time—­I always have.”

“But you will be just as lonely there.”  Jane in her astonishment was like a blind man feeling about for a protecting wall.

“No; Max and his sister will be at Beach Haven, and lots of others I know.  No, I won’t be lonely,” and an amused expression twinkled in her eyes.

Jane sat quite still.  Some of Captain Holt’s blunt, outspoken criticisms floated through her brain.

“Have you any reason for wanting to leave here?” she asked, raising her eyes and looking straight at Lucy.

“No, certainly not.  How foolish, dear, to ask me!  I’m never so happy as when I am with you.”

“Well, why then should you want to give up your home and all the comforts you need—­your flowers, garden, and everything you love, and this porch, which you have just made so charming, to go to a damp, half-completed hotel, without a shrub about it—­only a stretch of desolate sand with the tide going in and out?” There was a tone of suspicion in Jane’s voice that Lucy had never heard from her sister’s lips—­never, in all her life.

“Oh, because I love the tides, if nothing else,” she answered with a sentimental note in her voice.  “Every six hours they bring me a new message.  I could spend whole mornings watching the tides come and go.  During my long exile you don’t know how I dreamed every night of the dear tides of Barnegat.  If you had been away from all you love as many years as I have, you would understand how I could revel in the sound of the old breakers.”

For some moments Jane did not answer.  She knew from the tones of Lucy’s voice and from the way she spoke that she did not mean it.  She had heard her talk that way to some of the villagers when she wanted to impress them, but she had never spoken in the same way to her.

“You have some other reason, Lucy.  Is it Max?” she asked in a strained tone.

Lucy colored.  She had not given her sister credit for so keen an insight into the situation.  Jane’s mind was evidently working in a new direction.  She determined to face the suspicion squarely; the truth under some conditions is better than a lie.

“Yes,” she replied, with an assumed humility and with a tone as if she had been detected in a fault and wanted to make a clean breast of it.  “Yes—­now that you have guessed it—­it is Max.”

“Don’t you think it would be better to see him here instead of at the hotel?” exclaimed Jane, her eyes still boring into Lucy’s.

“Perhaps”—­the answer came in a helpless way —­“but that won’t do much good.  I want to keep my promise to him if I can.”