and inexplicable shyness overtook him. He hesitated, and stepped
half-hidden in a gully between the sand dunes.

As yet he had not been observed; the young girl called to the child and,
suddenly rising, threw off her red cap and shawl and quietly began to
disrobe herself. A couple of coarse towels were at her feet. Jarman
instantly comprehended that she was going to bathe with the child. She
undoubtedly knew as well as he did that she was safe in that solitude;
that no one could intrude upon her privacy from the bay shore, nor from
the desolate inland trail to the sea, without her knowledge. Of his
own contiguity she had evidently taken no thought, believing him safely
housed in his cabin beside the semaphore. She lifted her hands, and with
a sudden movement shook out her long hair and let it fall down her back
at the same moment that her unloosened blouse began to slip from her
shoulders. Richard Jarman turned quickly and walked noiselessly and
rapidly away, until the little hillock had shut out the beach.

His retreat was as sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his
intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly
instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the
South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins,
but they had provoked no such instinct as that which possessed him now.
More than that, he swept a quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on
either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him
from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward. From time to time
the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and
shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the
more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not
turn his head. He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had
ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin. He had not gone