Your letter was--"




VIII

The water was a broken glass of blue, sunstruck waves--there were few
swimmers in it where the two friends went in next morning, for the beach
proper with its bath-houses and float was nearly a quarter of a mile down.
Oliver could see Margaret's red cap bobbing twenty yards out as he tried
the water cautiously with curling toes, and, much farther out, a blue cap
and the flash of an arm going suddenly under. Mrs. Severance, the friend
Louise had brought out for the week-end, he supposed; she swam remarkably
for a woman. He swam well enough himself and couldn't give her two yards in
the hundred. Ted stood beside him, both tingling a little at the fresh of
the salt air. "Wow!" and they plunged.

A mock race followed for twenty yards--then Oliver curved off to duck
Margaret, already screaming and paddling at his approach, while Ted kept
on.

He swam face deep, catching short breaths under the crook of his arm,
burying himself in the live blue running sparkle, every muscle stretched as
if he were trying to rub all the staleness that can come to the mind and
the restless pricklings that will always worry the body clean from him,
like a snake's cast skin, against the wet rough hands of the water.
There--it was working--the flesh was compact and separate no longer--he
felt it dissolve into the salt push of spray--become one with that long
blue body of wave that stretched fluently radiant for miles and miles