Accident, and the spirit of adventure, had thrust these ladies in his path, and no doubt he liked them the better because they did not live as other people lived.

Their solitude, the close vicinity of the ocean, the feeling that in meeting them none of the ordinary conventional usages of society were needed, the wildness and the strangeness of the scene, all had charms which he admitted to himself.

And he knew that the girl was very lovely.

Of course he said so to himself and to others.

To take delight in beauty is assumed to be the nature of a young man, and this young man was not one to wish to differ from others in that respect.