circles--see 'Mode.' And you're Mrs. Severance."

"Yes. Nice water."

"Perfect."

A third look--a fairly long one--left Ted still puzzled. Age--thirty?
thirty-five? Swims perfectly. On "Mode." Wide eyes, sea-blue, sea-changing.
An odd nose that succeeded in being beautiful in spite of itself. A rather
full small mouth, not loose with sense nor rigid with things controlled,
but a mouth that would suck like a bee at the last and tiniest drop of any
physical sweet which the chin and the eyes had once decided to want. The
eyes measure, the mouth asks, the cleft chin finds the way. A face neither
content, nor easily to be contented--in repose it is neither happy nor
unhappy but only matured. Louise's friend--that was funny--Louise had such
an ideal simplicity of mind. Well--

"If you float--after a while you don't know quite where you're floating,"
said Mrs. Severance's voice detachedly.

Ted made no answer but turned over, spreading out his arms. For a few
moments they lay like corpses on the blue swelling round of the water
looking straight through infinite distance into the thin faint vapor of the
sky.

"Yes, I see what you mean."

"We might be clouds, almost, mightn't we?" with a slow following note of
laughter.