sail very well. No athlete this lady; she had even let her saddle-horse
go after the purchase of the second car; the sail now stood as her sole
sporting activity, and that but lately taken up. However, she handled
her bark with a tolerable efficiency. Keeping prudently inshore, yet
feeling delightfully venturesome, she skimmed along by the row of
shut-up cottages, and was soon lost to the stare of the rickey-drinkers,
of whose interest she had been quite unaware, or, let us say,
practically unaware....

Not for the eyes of anonymous transients or liberal-minded drummers had
Carlisle Heth donned this charming boat-dress and put out upon the
bounding blue. Not just to break the tedium of the afternoon, either;
not even exclusively for the vast exhilaration of sailing, though
undoubtedly she thrilled to that. But the interesting coincidence,
giving a peculiar point to it all, was that the three o'clock train from
town was due within the half-hour, and her present course lay dead
across the line of the street from the station.

Travel-worn young men; desolate Beach; chagrin at coming; and then,
presto, upon the jaded vision:--blue, sunny water, white-sailed boat,
beautiful nymph. Great heavens, what a tableau!...

We well know how resistlessly the male of humankind is drawn to the
female, at the mere glimpse of her flinging aside the tools of his
trade, whatever it may be, and furiously pursuing to the ends of the
earth. And we know, too (for the true poets of all ages have told us),
how the female of our species goes her innocent ways full of artless
fancies and sweet girlish imaginings, all unaware that an opposite and
uproarious sex is in headlong pursuit. And how she springs up startled
from her other-worldly dreams, to hear the thundering feet behind....