feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutante entering a box
at Grand Opera.

It was a hot night, but on a line with the front seats, there was a
double side door opening out onto a dock. From where Georgina sat she
could look out through the door and see the lights of a hundred boats
twinkling in long wavy lines across the black water, and now and then a
salt breeze with the fishy tang she loved, stole across the room and
touched her cheek like a cool finger.

The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina to see,
being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full of hair-breadth
escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and passengers
were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors
brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Lifesaving station.
And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece
of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her
shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.

Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it had been
in the story of Emmett Potter's drowning, as they told it on the day of
Cousin Mehitable's visit. Belle's hands were locked together in her lap,
and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were trying to keep
from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of the house
her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.

Georgina's heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out that
deep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feel
strangely confused, as if _she_ were the heroine on the films; as if
_she_ were kneeling there on the shore in that tragic moment of