Cope was immensely enthusiastic about Tristram. "If I could paint figures as I want to," he said, "I'd do Tristram as 'The Islander.' One feels that he belongs here as inevitably as the moors or the sands or the sea. Perhaps it is he who ought to be in bronze on the bluff, instead of the Indian."
"But he'd have to face the sea," said Becky.
"Yes," Cope agreed, "he would. He loves it and his ancestors lived by it. I'll stick to my Indian and the moor."
Becky gathered up her letters. "It is time for lunch, and Jane doesn't like to be kept waiting.
Won't you lunch with us? Grandfather will be delighted."
"I shall get to be a perpetual guest. I feel as if I were taking advantage of your hospitality."
"We shouldn't ask you if we didn't want you."
"Then I'll come."
They walked up the beach together. Becky was muffled in her red cape, Cope had a sweater under his coat. The air was sharp and clear as crystal.
"How anybody can go in bathing in this weather," Becky shivered, as a woman ran down the sands towards the sea. She cast off her bathing cloak and stood revealed, slim and rather startling, in yellow.