THE AFTERMATH OF AN ADVENTURE Diana awoke with a start.

Before sleep had overtaken her she had been lying on a shallow slope of sand, leaning against a rock, with her elbow resting on its flat surface and her book propped up in front of her.
Gradually the rhythmic rise and fall of the waves on the shore had lulled her into slumber--the _plop_ as they broke in eddies of creaming foam, and then the sibilant _hush-sh-sh_--like a long-drawn sigh--as the water receded only to gather itself afresh into a crested billow.
Scarcely more than half awake she sat up and stared about her, dreamily wondering how she came to be there.

She felt very stiff, and the arm on which she had been leaning ached horribly.

She rubbed it a little, dully conscious of the pain, and as the blood began to course through the veins again, the sharp, pricking sensation commonly known as "pins and needles" aroused her effectually, and she recollected that she had walked out to Culver Point and established herself in one of the numerous little bays that fringed the foot of the great red cliff, intending to spend a pleasant afternoon in company with a new novel.

And then the Dustman (idling about until his duties proper should commence in the evening) had come by and touched her eyelids and she had fallen fast asleep.
But she was thoroughly wide awake now, and she looked round her with a rather startled expression, realising that she must have slept for some considerable time, for the sun, which had been high in the heavens, had already dipped towards the horizon and was shedding a rosy track of light across the surface of the water.