"And what have you been doing with yourself, all day?"
I had turned my back on the pier bands, on the crowds of the esplanade, and had wandered as far as my legs would carry me along the beach--a hard, smooth beach of yellow sand--and was sitting there, with only the waves for company, when the voice of the man I had successfully dodged all day spoke at my back.
"You were not at lunch, nor at the table d'hôte, to-night," he added; and I did not consider that the statement demanded comment.
He came and sat beside me, and gathered up his knees into his arms and looked out to sea. "I suppose the beach is free to all?" he remarked; and my silence did not gainsay him.
"I am like you," he went on: "I care nothing for all that," he jerked his head in the direction of the town and the populace. "I'm never afraid of my own company. And you?"
"I prefer it to all other company," I assured him, and told the lie with the acrimony of truth.
"I have been tramping the town looking for rooms."
"Perhaps for a young woman, alone, it is better."
"I have not been alone until this morning," I told him steadily. "My sister left me by the early train; before breakfast."
"I do. She scarcely ever leaves me. We have everything in common. She is my twin-sister. You could scarcely tell the one from the other, apart."
The information did not flow from me as I desired, but was, rather, gasped out--or so it seems to me on looking back.
I felt him turn his eyes on me--they look absurdly blue and youthful in his sun-reddened, middle-aged face--but I think I mentioned this before. You know how I love a man's hair clipped to the bone, Berthalina? My dear, this one wears his in a mop! I must admit, however, it is a soft kind of hair, and does not arrange itself badly.
"We even share the same bed," I went on. I had to twist my fingers together painfully to maintain the necessary levelness of the indifferent voice. "But that is a matter of precaution."
"My sister is--a sleep-walker," I said, and waited, with the sound of the sea and the band and the multitude in the near distance booming in my head. "Even last night--I awoke to find our door open," I added. "She had wandered in her sleep."
I had said it; but I declare to you, Berthalina, the effort left me weak as a baby. Before you make up your mind to a career of perfidy, dear, go through a course of physical training. You want the strength of a Sandow, I assure you.
