Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/144

 Over across the rose-beds where the flowers nodded a gay good-morning to her, stretched the green lawn, which ran sloping down to the cliffs, at whose foot the waves murmured with a kindly melody.

No other sound was in the land, and in the sea no motion save for the white arms of a youth who was swimming by leisurely, and who slackened his strokes and looked up at the balcony, which showed him a woman who was young and graceful, the distance not allowing him to guess more.

Gladys looked at the swimmer, and thought how graceful were his motions, and how much the boyish head of gold hair and the white, supple, strong limbs, shining through the green waters, added to the scene. It brought human life into what had been be fore but an empty background; it made her feel that of all the grand things in the world, man may be the grandest. Why did the face of Charles Farwell seem to look at her from the green waves? If it had been