It was two weeks after Lucile’s mysterious experience in the old Mission building. Things had settled down to the humdrum life of hard work and faithful study. On Saturday night two girls from the university dormitories skated down the lagoon and walked down the beach to spend the evening at the “ship,” as they called it.
They were jolly Western girls. The five of them spent a pleasant evening popping corn, pulling candy and relating amusing incidents from their own lives. At eleven the visitors declared that they must go home.
“Wait, I’ll go a piece with you,” suggested Florence, reaching for her skates.
At the end of the lagoon the three put on their skates. Florence’s were on first, for she wore a boyish style which went on with a clamp.
Gliding out on the ice, she struck out in a wide circle, then returned to the others. Just as they came gliding out to meet her, she fancied she caught a movement in the branches of some shrubs at the left which grew down to the edge of the ice. For a second her eyes rested there, then she was obliged to turn about to join her companions.
It was a glorious night; the skating was wonderful. Keen air caressed their cheeks as they shot over the glistening surface to the tune of ringing steel. Little wonder she forgot the moving bushes in the joy of the moment.
Florence was a born athlete. Tipping the scale at one hundred and sixty, she carried not a superfluous ounce of fat. Four hours every day she spent on the gym floor or in the swimming pool. She was equipping herself for the work of a physical culture teacher and took her task seriously. She believed that most girls could be as strong as boys if they willed to be, and she proceeded to set a shining example.
It was on her return trip that she was reminded of the moving bushes. Catching the distant ring of skates, she saw a person dressed in a long coat of some sort coming rapidly toward her.
The channel where they would meet was narrow. Some instinct told her to turn back, to circle the island and to reach the nearest point to the yacht that way. Whirling about, she set herself going rapidly in the other direction.
“Now that was a foolish thing to do,” she told herself. “Probably someone saving a long walk by putting on his skates, same as I’m doing. Might embarrass him to have me turn about that way.”