FullReads

After supper the five of them were to go for a sail. There was a moon, and all the wonder of it.

Anthony was not keen about the plan. “Oh, look here, Nancy,” he complained, “we have done enough for one day–“

“I haven’t.”

Of course that settled it. Anthony shrugged his shoulders and submitted. He did not share Nancy’s almost idolatrous worship of the sea. It was the one fundamental thing about her. She bathed in it, swam in it, sailed on it, and she was never quite happy away from it.

I heard Anthony later in the hall, protesting. I had gone to the library for a book, and their voices reached me.

“I thought you and I might have one evening without the others.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Anthony.”

I think my heart lost a beat. Here was a lover asking his mistress for a moment–and she laughed at him. It did not fit in with my ideas of young romance.

Yet late that night I heard the murmur of their voices and looked out into the white night. They stood together by the sun-dial, and his arm was about her, her head on his shoulder. And it was not the first time that a pair of lovers had stood by that dial under the moon.

I went back to bed, but I could not sleep. I lighted my bedside lamp, and read Vanity Fair. I find Thackeray an excellent corrective when I am emotionally keyed up.

Nancy, too, was awake; I could see her light shining across the hall. She came in, finally, and sat on the foot of my bed.

“Your viking was singing as we passed his boat–“

“Singing?”

“Yes, hymns, Elizabeth. The others laughed, Anthony and Mimi, but I didn’t laugh. His voice is–wonderful–“

She had on a white-crepe peignoir, and there was no color in her cheeks. Her skin had the soft whiteness of a rose petal. Her eyes were like stars. As I lay there and looked at her I wondered if it was Anthony’s kisses or the memory of Olaf’s singing which had made her eyes shine like that.

I had heard him sing, and I said so, “in church.”

Her arms clasped her knees. “Isn’t it queer that he goes to church and sings hymns?”

“Why queer? I go to church.”

“Yes. But you are different. You belong to another generation, Elizabeth, and he doesn’t look it.”

I knew what she meant. I had thought the same thing when I first saw him walking up the aisle. “He has asked us to lunch with him to-morrow on his boat.”

It was the first time that I had mentioned it. Somehow I had not cared to speak of it before Anthony.

She showed her surprise. “So soon? Doesn’t that sound a little–pushing?”

“It sounds as if he goes after a thing when he wants it.”

“Yes, it does. I believe I should like to accept. But I can’t to-morrow. There’s a clambake, and I have promised the crowd.”

“He will ask you again.”

“Will he? You can say ‘yes’ for Wednesday then. And I’ll keep it.”

“I am not sure that we had better accept.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there’s Anthony.”

She slid from the bed and stood looking down at me. “You think he wouldn’t like it?”

“I am afraid he wouldn’t. And, after all, you are engaged to him, Nancy.”

“Of course I am, but he is not my jailer. He does as he pleases and I do as I please.”

“In my day lovers pleased to do the same thing.”

“Did they? I don’t believe it. They just pretended, and there is no pretense between Anthony and me”–she stooped and kissed me–“they just pretended, Elizabeth, and the reason that I love Anthony is because we don’t pretend.”

After that I felt that I need fear nothing. Nancy and Anthony–freedom and self-confidence–why should I try to match their ideals with my own of yesterday? Yet, as I laid my book aside, I resolved that Olaf should know of Anthony.

I had my opportunity the next day. Olaf came over to sit in my garden and again we had tea. He was much pleased when he knew that Nancy and I would be his guests on Wednesday.