When Sheila reached the home of her father and mother she spent her first few days renewing her kinship with them. They seemed older to her, but they had not aged as   
she had. They had been through just one more season. She had passed through an epoch.
 
They found her mightily changed. They were proud of her. They could see that she had taken good care of her body. They knew that she had succeeded in her art. They 
 
wondered what she had done with her soul. They had reached that thrilling, horribly anxious state of parentage when the girl child is grown to a woman and when every 
 
step is dangerous. Authority is ended; advice is untranslatable, and the parents become only spectators at a play whose star they have provided but whose cast they 
 
cannot select.
 
Sheila was not troubled about these things. Her chief excitement was in the luxury of having her afternoons to herself and every evening free. She was like a night-
 
watchman on a vacation. It was wonderful to be her own mistress from twilight to midnight. She had no make-up to put on except for the eyes of the sun. There were no 
 
footlights. The only need for attention to her skin was to fight off sunburn and the attacks of the surf in which she spent hours upon hours.
 
The business of her neighbors and herself was improvising hilarities: the sea, the motors, saddle-horses, tennis, golf, watching polo-games, horse-races, airship-
 
races, all the summer industries of Long Island.
 
The Kembles had a wide and easy acquaintance with the aristocracy. Roger and Polly forgot, if the others did not, that they were stage folk. They enjoyed the 
 
elegancies of life and knew how to be familiar without being vulgar. Sheila inherited their acquaintance and had been bred to their graces.
 
Young women and old of social importance made the girl one of their intimates. Any number of more or less nice young plutocrats offered to lead her along the primrose 
 
path as far as she would go. But she compelled respect, perhaps with a little extra severity for the sake of her maligned profession. Before many days she would have 
 
to return to it, but she was in no hurry.
 
One morning in the sun-flailed surf she grew weary of the jigging crowd of rope-dancers. Seeing that one of the floats was empty, she swam out to it. It was more of a 
 
journey than she thought, for we judge distances as walkers, not as swimmers. She climbed aboard with difficulty and rested, staring out to sea, the boundless sea 
 
where big waves came bowing in, nodding their white feathers.
 
She heard some one else swimming up, but did not look around. She did not want to talk to any of the men she had swum away from. She felt the float tilt as whoever it 
 
was sprang from the water and seated himself, dripping. Then she heard a voice with all the morning in it:
 
“Good morning!”
 
“Bret Winfield!” she cried, as she whirled on one hip like a mermaid.
 
“Sheila Kemble!” he laughed.
 
“What on earth are you doing here?”
 
“I’m not on earth; I’m alone in midocean with you.”
 
“But what brought you? Where did you come from?”
 
“Home. I just couldn’t stand it.”
 
“Stand what?”
 
“Being away from you.”
 
“Good heavens!”
 
“It’s been the other place to me.”
 
“Really?”
 
“I told Dad I needed a rest; that something was the matter with my mind. He admitted that, but blamed it to lack of use. Then I ducked. I shipped my car to New York, 
 
and flew down the Motor Parkway to here. Got here yesterday. Been hanging round, trying to find you alone. Swell chance! There’s a swarm after you all the time, isn’
 
t there?”
 
“Is there?”
 
“Last night I saw you dancing at the hotel with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I hoped you’d come out and sit on the piazza so that I could sandbag the man and carry 
 
you off. But you didn’t.”
 
“No.”
 
“Why?”
 
“I didn’t care to be alone with any of them.”
 
“Lord bless your sweet soul! Were you thinking of me?”
 
“Not necessarily.”
 
“Are you glad to see me?”
 
“Oh yes. The more the merrier.”
 
This impudence brought his high hopes down. But they soared again when she said, with charming inconsistency:
 
“Dog-on it! here comes somebody!”
 
A fat man who somewhat resembled the globular figures cartoonists use to represent the world, wallowed out, splashing like a side-wheel raft-boat. He tried to climb 
 
aboard, but his equator was too wide for his short arms, and neither Sheila nor Winfield offered to lend him a hand. He gave up and propelled himself back to shore 
 
with the grace of a bell-buoy.
 
“Good-by, old flotsam and jetsam,” said Winfield.
 
Sheila could not but note the difference between the other man and Winfield. There was every opportunity for observation in both cases. Each inly acknowledged that the 
 
other was perfection physically. Each wished to be able to observe the other’s soul in equal completeness of display. But that power was denied them.
 
It would have served them little to know each other’s souls, since happiness in love is not a question of individual perfections, but of their combination and what 
 
results from it. Fire and water are excellent in their place, but brought together, the result is familiar—either the water changes the flame to sodden ashes, or the 
 
flame changes the water to steam. Both lose their qualities, change unrecognizably.
 
In any case, Winfield courted Sheila with all the impetuous stubbornness of his nature. He had no visible rivals to fight, but the affair was not denied the added 
 
charm of danger.
 
One blistering day, when all of the populace that could slid off the hot land into the water like half-baked amphibians, Sheila and Winfield plunged into the nearest 
&nbs............