THE beach was comparatively deserted. After the week-end, which had been unusually gay, the few scattered groups gathered under the hired umbrellas, with here and there the flash of an individual crimson or green parasol, scarcely served to populate the stretch of hot sand.
Near his stand, the Harvard student who was serving as life-guard during the summer months stood, bronzed and athletic, talking to a young fellow whose scant bathing costume revealed the lines and muscles of an Antinous.
“It is the day like this that strains my nerves,” the guard was saying. “When the surf is filled with people, even if some one goes under, there are a score of hands to give rescue, but that girl out there now, beyond the breakers, makes me uneasy.”
“Swims like a fish,” responded the Antinous. “I’ve watched her for days.”
“But she isn’t a fish, and if the realization came to her out there in the water, she’d be altogether like a woman.”
“Since you are ill at ease about her, suppose I swim out, just to relieve your mind?”
The guard nodded. There was the suspicion of a smile about his lips, but he continued to watch the woman in question.
The distance to which the venturesome swimmer had gone was greater than had been apparent from the beach, and before Merrington had made half of it, the eyes of all those upon the sand and of those in the surf were upon the woman and himself. Only the swimmers themselves remained oblivious of the general interest.
Merrington swam on with the free, easy strokes of one to whom deep water conveys no terrors. The very touch of the sea was tonic that July morning, and he stretched his sinuous limbs with the overbounding energy and delight of a perfect manhood. The thought of danger, even to another, seemed an absurd thing to him, so sang the lusty blood in his veins. Yet he swam with unerring, cleaving strokes after the woman, who still went outward.