“No, I know he’s not!” Nina said, quickly, turning suddenly red, and looking attentively at the print of her wet hand on the dry, hot boards.

“And I would be sorry if he were,” Harriet pursued, not too seriously, “for I want you to marry a man of your own age, when you do marry, and not a man who has had—­well, other affairs, who has that confidential, flattering manner with all women!”

“If you think I don’t realize perfectly that you don’t like Royal Blondin, you are mistaken!” Nina said, airily, even with a yawn.  “I am perfectly able to manage my own affairs in that direction!”

“Yes, I know, dear.  But we want you—­” Harriet was beginning pacifically.  But Nina angrily interrupted: 

“Oh, I know you and Father talk about me, if that’s what you mean!”

“No, dear, listen.  We want you to see other types of men, to see all kinds.  You will be rich, Nina—­”

“Why don’t you say that Royal is after my money!” Nina burst out, with symptoms of tears.  The ready name frightened Harriet afresh; she knew that they corresponded, that grass was not growing under Royal’s feet.  She and Nina were sitting close together now, their drying hair tossed backward, their faces flushed.  “The first man I ever really liked,” Nina said, with a heaving breast, “the first man who ever understood me—!”

“Nina,” Harriet said, “you don’t want to have to write your husband a check on your honeymoon?”

She felt it a cruel cut; but seventeen years of flattery and smoothness had armed Nina in impregnable complacence.  She gave a sneering laugh that trembled on the brink of tears, and tried to control a mouth that was shaking with anger.  One look of utter scorn she did manage, then she shrugged not so much her shoulders as her whole body, and flung herself furiously into the water.  Harriet called “Nina!” first impatiently, and then coaxingly.  But the younger girl swam steadily to the shore, and Harriet saw her a minute later, shaking herself outside the shower, before she disappeared into the big bath house.  With a grave face, as she absentmindedly tossed and spread the glorious mass of her glittering hair, Harriet sat on, pondering.  They had reached a crisis; Nina, between delicious confidences to Amy and aggrieved appeal to Royal, would commit herself now.  There was no help for it; she, Harriet, must act.

Amy and Saunders swam by her, breathless and screaming as they made for shore, and fought and shrieked under the shower.  Then they, too, entered the dressing rooms, and there was absolute silence in the world.  Harriet had entirely forgotten Ward, until he swam under the float, and with a characteristic yell, rose streaming like a seal under her very feet.

Genuinely startled, she gratified him with a scream, and they both laughed like children as he flung himself dripping on the hot boards, and proceeded to bake luxuriously in the sun.