Half an hour had passed, when suddenly the mountain stillness was broken by men's voices.

Eve was at the opposite side of the pool from where she had left her clothes. Between her and the approaching voices was the little island. She landed hastily upon this and hid herself among the bushes.

Three gross, fat men and one long, lean man, with a face like leather and an Adam's apple that bobbed like a fisherman's float, came down to the beach, sweating terribly, and cast thereon knapsacks, picnic baskets, hatchets, fishing-tackle, and all the complicated paraphernalia of amateurs about to cook their own lunch in the woods.

All but one had loud, coarse, carrying voices, and they all appeared to belong to the ruling class. They appeared, in short, to have neither education nor refinement nor charm nor anything to commend them as leaders or examples. Eve wondered how it was possible for them to find pleasure even in each other's company. They quarrelled, wrangled, found fault, abused each other, or suddenly forgot their differences, gathering about the fattest of the fat men and listening, almost reverently, while he told a story. When he had finished, they would throw their heads far back and scream with laughter. He must have told wonderfully funny stories; but his voice was no more than a husky whisper, so that Eve could not make head or tail of them.

After a while the whispering fat man produced from one of the baskets four little glasses and a fat dark bottle. And shortly after there was less wrangling and more laughter.

The thin man with the leathery face and the bobbing Adam's apple put a fishing-rod together, tied a couple of gaudy flies to his leader, and began to cast most unskilfully from the shores of the pool, moving along slowly from time to time.

The fat men, occasionally calling to ask if he had caught anything, busied themselves with preparations for lunch. One of them made tremendous chopping sounds in the wood and furnished from time to time incommensurate supplies of fire-wood. Smoke arose and a kettle was slung.

Meanwhile Eve, cowering among the bushes, for all the world like her famous ancestress when the angel came to the garden, did not quite know what to do. She had only to lift her voice and explain, and the men would go away for a time. She felt sure of that. She had been brought up to believe in the exquisite chivalry of the plain American man.

But there was something about the four which repelled her, which stuck in her throat. She did not wish to be under any sort of obligation to any of them. And so she kept mousy-quiet, and turned over in her mind an immense number of worthless stratagems and expedients.

Have you ever tried to lie on the lawn under a tree and read for an hour or two—incased in all your buffer of clothes? Try it some time—without the buffers. Try it in the buff. And then imagine how comfortable Eve was on the island. Imagine how soft it felt to her elbows, for instance. And imagine to yourself, too, that it was not an uninhabited island—but one upon which an immense gray spider had made a home and raised a family.