II.

Merrington had not been slow to avail himself of Mrs. Le Moyne’s invitation to transfer his things from the hotel to her cottage. Any hesitation he might have felt at abandoning the bachelor freedom of the public hostelry was quite overcome when she pointed out to him, from the windows of the room she offered, a view of the Selwyn cottage, just across a plot of trimly kept grass.

For the first few days the move did not seem to profit him any in his desire to see more of Jacqueline. Once he had met her on her way to the beach, and she had given him a bare nod of recognition. Now and again he caught glimpses of her on the neighboring veranda, but she never let her glances stray in the direction of Mrs. Le Moyne’s cottage. Several times when he had passed her on the board walk at the promenade hour, she had not cared to notice him, and never with anything but a bow so formal as to make it evident that she did not cut him entirely merely because of his cousin’s introduction. Merrington knew, for the first time in his enviable life, the pangs of misprized love.

His cousin was watching the course of his malady with interest.

“What do you know about Jacqueline?” she asked him one morning, as they sat upon their veranda, and in response to his reiterated determination to conquer that young lady’s aversion and make her his wife.

Merrington leaned forward, his boyish face radiant, the bronze of his skin dark against the white suit he wore. His cousin let her eyes rest on him with an admiration he was too modest to detect.

“Nothing and everything,” he returned, after a time. “She is the most striking girl I’ve ever seen. She is plucky and daring and defiant.”

“Charming qualities for a wife! Is that all?”

“I can’t put the rest in words,” he answered, coloring swarthily.

Just then the latch of the Selwyns’ front gate clicked, and Jacqueline appeared on the shaded street. Peggie came to a speedy resolution.

“Jacqueline!” she cried. “Wait a minute until I get my hat. I want to join you.”

As the girl stopped at the foot of the path, Merrington went briskly toward her. She met him with grave annoyance.

“We have become near neighbors, Miss Selwyn.” There was not a trace of nervousness in the clear tones.

“That is a seaside perquisite. Asbury, especially, makes the whole world kin.”

He could not have said that she was rude, but every word was a rebuff and a disclaimer of intimacy. His instinct told him it was not rudeness of which she was accusing him. So much, at least, had his introduction to her wrought. The reflection made him smile genially, and she noted how dazzling his even teeth were in his suntanned face.

“Miss Selwyn, I wish you would forgive me.”

“Really there is nothing to forgive. Do you think Mrs. Le Moyne has forgotten me?”

“I am sure she has not. Do you know that is the first friendly remark you have made me?”

He saw her brows arch themselves slightly while her glance sought him an instant.

“To be frank with you,” she said, “I do not know that I meant it to be

## particularly friendly.”

“It wasn’t, but you have been so particularly unfriendly.”

She flushed, turning long before she needed to greet Peggie, who came leisurely down the walk with book and parasol, and tossed a cap to Merrington.

“We are all going to listen to the music, isn’t that it?” she asked. “The orchestra is really worth hearing this year--too good, indeed, for the crowd that goes to the pavilions.”

“I am going in the water,” Jacqueline said, laying an accent of defense on the pronoun. They walked on together, Peggie in the middle.

“Let us all go,” Merrington urged. “It is a gorgeous day. The sea is absolutely singing to us.”

When they reached the board walk, the sea stretched out before them resplendent in the sun. There were a few bathers at the upper lines, but lower down, the beach could be seen already dotted by the patrons of the more central baths. In the glare of the hot sun the walk was empty, but in the grateful coolness of the pavilions many had gathered to hear the music. Peggie espied an acquaintance on the platform above them, and ran thither. Jacqueline was plainly provoked.

“If Peggy deserts us,” Merrington said, sententiously, “why should we not desert Peggie?”

Jacqueline frowned.

“Need I detain you?” she asked. “I was coming here alone when your cousin stopped me. That is, I mean, I was going in the water. I had no intention of stopping in this sunless dampness.”

“I hate it, too. Why should we stop?”

The girl looked at him intently, her heart quickening with an emotion that she could not have defined, so complex was it, indeed, of many emotions. Mingled with her anger and annoyance was an almost imperceptible tremor of fear which made her catch her breath.

Merrington waited patiently for her answer. There was nothing in the bold squareness of his youthful attitude to betoken the uncertainty of mind in which she was holding him. On the contrary, he smiled with well-assumed assurance, his eyes frankly admiring in their gaze. Jacqueline spoke, suppressing partially her irritation:

“How dull you must be finding the time! Do you know no one down here?”

“I have forgotten time and people.” The meaning in his look and voice sent the blood to the girl’s face. She glanced about her uneasily, but Peggie’s back, and the animation with which she was talking to her friends, gave no encouragement. She turned, impulsively.

“Come,” she said, imperiously enough. “We will go in the water for a little while.”

To Merrington’s surprise, when he appeared on the beach in his swimming suit, Jacqueline was already in the surf. This tacit avoidance of him banished the smile from his lips for a moment as her more positive combativeness had not been able to do.

That he was really in love at last, Merrington knew beyond the possibility of a doubt. He knew it, because in all the twenty-six years of his petted life he had never experienced anything like this peaceful elation underlying all the tremor of his senses. Jacqueline disdained him; he recognized that fact, but it caused him no more genuine annoyance than the breaking upon him, when he entered the surf that was now rolling in before him, of the waves which his manhood delighted to buffet and overcome. For much favoring had never spoiled the sweetness of his character, and he met resistance with a healthy determination.

He strolled into the surf, and a great billow lifted Jacqueline into his arms. He held her firmly as another followed close upon.

“I hate the surf,” she gasped, blinded and helpless. “It does exactly with you what you do not want.”

“Do you think so? Now rise to this one.”

He lifted her over a magnificent roller, turning to watch it break, and sweep inward the less daring bathers near shore.

“Why did you not wait for me?” he asked.

“I never for a moment thought it necessary.”

He looked delighted.

“Is it very hard for you to accept the inevitable, Miss Selwyn?”

“In what way, Mr. Merrington?”

“In the way of my devotion?”

She hesitated, not daring to take him seriously. He still held her hands, and the depth of the water at its smoothest was up to her neck as they stood.

“We must look like a pair of jumping-jacks from the shore,” she said, with a swift remembrance of his deserved punishment at her hands, and of their present position. His strong muscles never seemed to tire of lifting her to each succeeding billow. She hardly knew how her reticence had slipped from her, but now, at the risk of being bowled over by a wave, she released her hands from his. He turned back with her.

“Do not let me take you in,” she said, politely formal. “You have had no swim at all.”

“There is always the ocean,” he replied.