In a cavernous pocket of the captain’s overcoat she found a handkerchief. She dried her eyes with it, and turned back. The Tower faced the lane, and the left side of it fronted the beach, rising stark and high from the sands. She looked up at it. On the first floor a sun parlor had been built out, and through the windows she could see a woman sitting there in a deck chair.
“I suppose that’s Muriel,” she thought, with a reawakening of her lively interest.
She came a little nearer. The woman was wearing a negligee and a coquettish little silk cap. Her back was turned toward Lexy. She lay there motionless, as if she were asleep.
Lexy drew closer. The woman turned, straightened up in the chair, and rose. A shiver ran along Lexy’s spine. She stopped and stared and stared.
The woman had raised her thin arms above her head, stretching. Then, for a moment, she stood in an odd and lovely pose, with her hands clasped behind her head. Oh, surely no one else ever stood like that! That figure, that attitude—it couldn’t be any one else!
“Caroline!” cried Lexy. “Caroline!”
The woman did not hear. She was moving toward the long windows of the room, and her every step, every line of her figure, was familiar and unmistakable to Lexy.
“Caroline!” she cried, running forward across the wet sand. “Wait! Wait for me, Caroline!”
A hand seized her arm. With a gasp, she looked into the pale, heavy face of Dr. Quelton. He was smiling.
“Miss Moran!” he said. “This is an unexpected pleasure—”