The Valley of Indecision

Early evening it was, several days later, evening of a sultry, stifling
day, which had escaped the bounds of longitude and invaded even the
North Shore. The open ocean, itself, seemed to have forgotten its
habitual unrest and yielded to the general languor. From the Thayers'
summer home--a glorified bungalow, broad of veranda and shingled
silvery-olive, atop a long, terraced bank--it had the appearance of a
limitless mirror, reflecting the unblemished blue infinity of the sky.
Only the never-ceasing series of vague white lines which ever crept up
the shelving beach, to vanish like half-formed dreams, showed that,
although the mighty deep slept, its bosom rose and fell as it breathed.

The sky was a hazy horizon blue, unblemished save for a few vaporous
clouds far in the west; the sun, well toward the end of its journey, was
hazy, too, a thing of mystery; in the far eastern distance the broad
Atlantic softened to a hazy violet-gray which, in turn, blended, almost
without a line of demarcation, into the still more distant heavens.

Far out, above the waters, a solitary gull circled with slow, sweeping
curves, and now and again planed to the surface of the sea and struck
from it a faint white spark.

On the screened-in veranda, the members of the family, which now
included Rose, sat or reclined, in attitudes of indolence, the men in
negligee shirts and white flannels, the women in light dresses.
Rose--who had, the day before, officially declared herself "off" the
case; but had stayed on, a guest, at the general solicitation--wore a
white dimity faintly sprinkled with her favorite rosebuds.