The Beauty and the Bolshevist

								

before long came out on the edge of the cliffs, with the whole panorama
of sunrise over the Atlantic spread out before him.
He stood there a moment, somebody’s close, well-kept lawn under his
feet, and a pale-pink sea sucking in and out on the rocks a hundred
feet below. The same hot, red sun was coming up; there wasn’t a steady
breeze, but cool salt puffs came to him now and then with a breaking
wave. It was going to be a hot day, and Ben liked swimming better than
most things in life. He hesitated.
If he had turned to the left, he would have come presently to a public
beach and would have had his swim conventionally and in due time. But
some impulse told him to turn to the right, and he began to wander
westward along the edge of the cliffs—always on his left hand, space
and the sea, and on his right, lawns or gardens or parapets crowned by
cactus plants in urns, and behind these a great variety of
houses—French chateaux and marble palaces and nice little white
cottages, and, finally, a frowning Gothic castle. All alike seemed
asleep, with empty piazzas and closed shutters, and the only sign of
life he saw in any of them was one pale housemaid shaking a duster out
of a window in an upper gable.
At last he came to a break in the cliffs—a cove, with a beach in it, a
group of buildings obviously bathing-houses. The sacredness of this
pavilion did not occur to Ben; indeed, there was nothing to suggest it.
He entered it light-heartedly and was discouraged to find the door of
every cabin securely locked. The place was utterly deserted. But Ben
was persistent, and presently he detected a bit of a garment hanging
over a door, and, pulling it out, he found himself in possession of a
man’s bathing suit. A little farther on he discovered a telephone room
unlocked. Here he undressed and a minute later was swimming straight
out to sea.
The level rays of the sun were doing to the water just what the
headlights of the motors had done to the road; they were enlarging
every ripple and edging the deep purple-blue with yellow light. Except
for a fishing dory chunking out to its day’s work, Ben had the sea and
land to himself. He felt as if they were all his own, and, for a
socialist, was guilty of the sin of pride of possession. He was
enjoying himself so much that it was a long time before he turned to
swim back.
He was swimming with his head under water most of the time so that he
did not at once notice that a raft he had passed on his way out was now
occupied. As soon as he did see it his head came up. It was a female
figure, and even from a distance he could see that she was unconscious
of his presence and felt quite as sure of having the world to herself
as he was. She was sitting on the edge of the raft, kicking a pair of
the prettiest legs in the world in and out of the water. They were clad
in the thinnest of blue-silk stockings, the same in which a few minutes