[Illustration: He said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed
himself out]

"It was a hot, close night, and Cogan's bed no cooler for being wrapped
four times around with mosquito netting, so after he had tossed around
an hour or two, he guessed he might as well get up and have a swim. He
had only to step through a window, take a hop, step, and jump, and he
would be at the edge of the surf; but as he opened up his shutters
softly, so as not to disturb anybody else in that wing of the house, he
saw that it was already near dawn, and then wh-s-s-t, quick as that, the
top edge of the sun popped up.

"Cogan looking out saw a young girl of maybe fourteen years with long
black hair hanging loose behind her. It was a smooth, silver-like sea,
with hardly surf enough to raise a white edge on the beach, and the
girl, ankle deep in the water, was kicking her feet ahead of her, making
a great splashing as she marched along. Her legs below her knees were
bare, and she was gurgling with joy. By the time she was abreast of
Cogan's window, it was full dawn.

"Suddenly she turned, ran in waist deep, and plunged seaward. Cogan,
seeing her over her head and alone, began to worry; but he might have
saved himself the worry--she came tumbling back like a young dolphin,
found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of
Chinese slippers piled on the sand. The long rays of the just rising sun
were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to
her in a million twinkling drops as she ran. Cogan remembered a marble
nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning
in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a
couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, and being marble the