Someone was striding down the hard strip of sand, barely out of reach of the white foam that almost lapped his feet. His lips moved as he strode. Apparently in deep converse with another realm, a smile radiated over his face ever and anon as if he was discovering new, wonderful, magical secrets. Elizabeth was familiar with the ruse. As he rounded the headland, his face came into full view.

Elizabeth decided that she liked it. She had never liked a face so much. A grave face with a strong chin, into which very dark blue eyes were deeply set. She smiled at him, but he did not see her: his tall, broad shoulders were bent seawards, and his head slouched a little in deep meditation.

Presently he sat on a distant cove, and fumbled for something from his pockets. Barely sensible to the magnetic attraction she felt, Elizabeth got up, and very carelessly walked towards him. She perched herself on a nearby boulder. She leaned her cheek on her knees and immersed herself in the sunset. Gold was her hair, white her dress, and very fair and luminous was her skin. Elizabeth did not know what an ethereal picture she made against the dark cliffs in the gathering gloom.

"Hello," the young man called.

Elizabeth broke impulsively into an answering smile. "I've been watching you." she said frankly. "I did not want to break the spell of the sunset for you."

The young man smiled appreciatively. Elizabeth recognized in it something akin to her soul. They were fast friends before another word passed.

"I've always loved the sunset." he said finally.

"So have I," Elizabeth answered. "I had - have - a friend who used to imagine the sunset was really a meadow full of flowers, and I - I was spending the time, choosing a flower for each shade."

The young man looked as if he would say something, but Elizabeth went on.

"The orange are tiger-lilies, goldenrods streak through them, behind them are misty pink hydrangeas - I don't know, how well you know flowers." Elizabeth laughed apologetically.

"And the purple night is a large damask violet, with a streak of silver in its heart. I've loved flowers all my life." her friend answered strongly.

"I'm so glad." Elizabeth cried.

"Do you think it's girlish of me?" he asked laughingly, knowing that she would not. Elizabeth made a pretty reply in the negative.

"I used to get thrashed all the time when I was a boy, for loving beauty so. My classmates thought it was so milksoppish. But I couldn't help it!!" he mused. "Even my grandmother thought it was foolish to - write poetry. There were very few people I could talk to about my thoughts, so I would come away to the shore, and - have conversations with all sorts of imaginary people."

"Was that what you were doing?" Elizabeth laughed - but laughed sympathetically, because imaginary friends were a delightful thing. Almost as delightful as real kindred spirits.

"No. I was - writing poetry. I would like to be a poet, I've always known I had to be one. I just had something published last month."

"I don't think that's something you need to become," Elizabeth mused. "I suppose you really already are one, publications notwithstanding. You were born that way."

"Yes." the young man said appreciatively again. "You understand perfectly."

They sat in communicative silence for a while.

"I either want to ask you," Elizabeth spoke up, because she could without shattering any spells now that they were good friends, "if I could read your poetry, and if you would tell me about your people at the shore."

"I can't show you this last poem I was just writing, yet." he said regretfully. He seemed troubled as he searched for an explanation "I really would like to show you, sometime" - Elizabeth liked the subtle emphasis on you -"but it's because -"

"'they are apt to become feeble in the utteranace: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must kept the germinating grain away from the light.' " Elizabeth quoted.

"Yes. I will tell you about my shore people, though, and in return you must tell me about how you became acquainted with your friend of the sunset."

"My grandmother lives on the shore road, as I told you, and I lived with her in the days when I was called girlish, had a delicate mouth and chestnut girls." He exchanged an inexorable smile with Elizabeth. "I am visiting, of course - on summer vacation from college, but father and Mother Lavendar and I always spend summers at a little stone house near Grafton. It belongs to Mother Lavendar, father and Mother Lavendar were engaged there when they were only children."

"What a lovely name, 'Mother Lavendar' is," Elizabeth thrilled. "It makes me think of music, and lace, and old-fashioned scents. I love the aroma of lavendar."

"The garden at Echo Lodge - that's our summer home - is full of it. You must come see it, one day. But what I wish you could see - nay, hear - most are the echoes: if you believe in such things, they abound in the enfolding woods, and when you blow the little french horn we have, they answer like 'horns of elfland, faintly dying.'"

"I'll always believe in fairyland." Elizabeth avowed. "It makes the world so much more interesting to believe in things."

"I try to, too. Anyway, where were we? I lived with grandmother in Avonlea before father met Mother Lavendar - she is my stepmother. She took me in just after my little mother had died."

"I lived with Grandmother - actually she is really my great-grandmother - because my mother had died, too." Elizabeth said sympathetically again.

"Then you understand. Grandmother didn't understand things very well, unlike my own little mother, or even father who could whenever he tried. I was very lonely so I came here and imagined all sorts of things. I came to tryst with who I called my "rore people." I imagined a jolly pair of sailors who told me stories about all their adventures on the sea. They didn't just sail to worldly places, but to moonglades and the sun-- say, the constellations too. I imagined a dark haired girl who lived in Andrew's Cove. She wasn't a mermaid but she knew all about them. And there was a Golden Lady too - she looks rather like you. She plays her harp and is attuned to the music of the winds."

"It's very delightful." Elizabeth said. She couldn't wait to tell him about her Tomorrow.

"But then, father came back and remarried and we moved to the States. When I visited the next summer, I could barely wait to see my Rock People. I almost ran all along the coves and headlands. Then - I had to try to see them, and I could only see one of them. I never had the heart to try again." his voice was deep, as if the anguish of losing his halcyon childhood still pained him. "The Rock People may still be here again somewhere, but they won't be here for me." he finished whimsically.

Elizabeth in turn kept her bargain and told him about her fanciful correspondence with a Poet and her foolish mistake that caused its end. Her friend listened attentively. His eyes looked like he understood her chagrin so well, that Elizabeth found herself pouring out her history of her life at the Evergreens with Grandmother and The Woman. Her friend learned all about Tomorrow, and the map of fairyland.

Finally the dark fell, the wind and waves whistled turbulently, and a million constellations burst forth in the night. Her friend walked with her cross-lots.

"What is your name?" he asked her as they reached the main road. Elizabeth thought there was a very blithe note in his voice. She responded in kind.

"Elizabeth Grayson of Windermere in Boston, but not for long because we're moving to Paris this fall."

The young man - looking at him in the dark, Elizabeth realized that he was not so very young, not a boy at any rate, muttered something under his breath like, "Thank God I found her, just in time!"

"I'm visiting Mrs. Ralph Andrews for the month." she anticipated his next question and offered the answer.

"Oh - yes." he said vaguely, apparently mired in thought. "That is Dora Keith isn't it - she went to school with me. Give her my greetings, from Paul Irving." He clasped Elizabeth's hand warmly before he let her turn into Dora's gate.