reading aloud; but he could see only one arm of the chair, and the white skirt flowing down over her knees.
The man raised his gray head to interrupt the reader.
"That's not so good as the original," he said, in a tone of fretful resignation.
Archer let his hand fall, and instinctively turned to go back toward Black Harbor.
II
The instinct was that of the social rebel. The house seemed too plainly the comfortable summer cottage of sophisticated people. He had not been in that atmosphere since the days when his uncle and aunt had dragged him to the seashore, to dress, and eat, and talk, and—among rich women growing fat and rich men growing bald—to plan trivial monotonies beside the moving eternity of the ocean. It was to escape just this that he had turned sailor, and set his own naked character to wrestle with life. So now he turned to go away.
But the girl's ears must have been sharp.
