"I'm coming!" her heart answered with a thrill, and she swooped toward it with a whoop and widespread arms.
Her feet crashed into the jolly shouting shingle, and she ploughed her way through it, to the rocks under the cliff which made her bathing tent.
The tide was brimming and beautiful. It came welling up, curled and fell with a soft, delicious swish on the answering beach.
Calm and full, twinkling still through faint mists, its shining surface was ruffled faintly by a light-footed breeze.
Swift as a bird the girl, blue-clad now, came rushing out from her hiding-place, her fair hair bunched in a cap, the sea in her nostrils, and exaltation in her heart.
This surely was heaven!
A moment she hovered on the brink, testing the waters with a tentative foot.
Then with a sigh of content she trusted herself to the deep. It closed about her like the arms of a friend.
She had not bathed since November, and it seemed to her the ocean welcomed her, clinging to her, lifting her, loving her, holding her close.
She buried her face in it, rose dripping, shaking the water off her eyes and face and hair, and swam out to sea with long and steady strokes.