"Oh, yes. We saw nearly everything last time we were over."

There was a third silence. I saw a remark about the weather trembling
on his lip, and, as I was beginning to feel the chill of the water a
little, I determined to put a temporary end to the conversation.

"I think I will be swimming back now," I said.

"You're quite sure I can't give you a tow?"

"Quite, thanks. Perhaps you would care to come to breakfast with us,
Mr. Cloyster? I know my mother would be glad to see you."

"It is very kind of you. I should be delighted. Shall we meet on the
beach?"

I swam off to my cave to dress.

Breakfast was a success, for my mother was a philosopher. She said very
little, but what she did say was magnificent. In her youth she had
moved in literary circles, and now found her daily pleasure in the
works of Schopenhauer, Kant, and other Germans. Her lightest reading
was _Sartor Resartus_, and occasionally she would drop into Ibsen
and Maeterlinck, the asparagus of her philosophic banquet. Her chosen
mode of thought, far from leaving her inhuman or intolerant, gave her a
social distinction which I had inherited from her. I could, if I had
wished it, have attended with success the tea-drinkings, the
tennis-playings, and the eclair-and-lemonade dances to which I was
frequently invited. But I always refused. Nature was my hostess.