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all alone in the hotel now, and besides it was very hot. “Very well—if we get back by night.”
    “You have a date?”
    “No, but there’s a big meeting.”
    “Oh, the union.”
    “I’m an officer, you know.”
    “So you are. All right, I’ll have you back in time.”
    So on my way up to the cocktail bar, I hurriedly bought a little sport dress and hat, a bathing suit, slippers and beach robe. Sure enough, next morning at nine o’clock the desk phoned that a Mr. Harris was in the lobby, and I went down wearing my sports outfit and carrying the beach things in a little bag that went with them. I supposed we were to take a train at Grand Central, but he had a car out there, a nice-looking green coupe. It was very pleasant riding along without any train to think about, even if the traffic was so heavy we could barely crawl. It was about eleven o’clock when we reached the shack, which was on a bluff above a little cove, with steps leading down. Well, he called it a shack, but I would have said estate, for it was a very fine place, with luxurious furniture on the veranda, and a big hall inside with a grand piano in it and soft chairs all around. I couldn’t help expressing surprise. “Did you say you just—borrowed this?”
    “Belongs to some friends of mine.”
    “Do all your friends have such places?”
    “I hope not. Some of them actually have taste.”
    “It’s very luxurious.”
    “And very silly.”
    Now all of this was a complete evasion, as you will see, and I put it in to illustrate once more that during this period Grant was never frank with me. Also, he at once changed the subject. “What do you want to do? Swim, sail or eat?”
    “Well—can’t we do all three?”
    “That’s an idea.”
    He took me to what seemed to be a guest bedroom, showed me the bath and anything I might want, and went. I changed into my swimming suit, put on my slippers, and tied a ribbon around my hair. Then I put the bathing cap into the bag, slipped on my beach robe, and went out. I thought I looked very pretty, but I forgot about that when I saw him. He was ready and standing at a table flipping over the pages of a magazine. He had on a pair of faded blue shorts, big canvas shoes, and a little wrinkled duck cap with a white sweater over his arm. But he looked like some statue poured out of copper, and the few things he had on hardly seemed to matter. The deep sunburn was all over him, but that was only part of it. He was big and loose and lumbering, and yet he seemed to be made completely of muscle. The hunch-shouldered look that he had in his clothes came from big bunches of muscle back of his arms, and in fact his whole back spread out like a fan from his hips to his shoulders. His legs tapered down so as to be quite slim at the ankles and altogether he looked like one of the Indians he was always talking about. He turned, smiled and nodded. “Ready?”
    “All ready.”
    “Come on while we still have a breeze.”
    He picked up a wicker basket and started for the veranda. I said: “Is that our lunch? Where did it come from?”
    “We brought it with us.”
    “I thought I’d have to fix it.”
    “It’s fixed.”
    I took hold of the handle too, we went out on the veranda, he picked up a paddle that was standing against a post, and we went down the steps of the bluff to the beach. The lunch he put in a little skiff that was pulled upon the sand, then he dragged the skiff to the edge of the water and motioned me into the bow. He gave it a running push and jumped in very neatly. Then he picked up the paddle and paddled out to a sailboat that was moored to a round white block of wood that he called a buoy. He made the skiff fast to a ring in the buoy, and we climbed into the sailboat. It had no bowsprit or any thing, just a mast that went straight up from the bow, with one big triangular sail. He set down the basket, un wound some rope from a cleat, and began to pull up the sail. I helped him, and it took about a