4

He glanced sidewise at Cicely. They were walking down Douglass Street. Just ahead lay the still, faintly shimmering lake, stretching out to the end of the night and beyond. Already the whispering sound reached their ears of ripples lapping at the shelving beach. And away out, beyond the dim horizon, a soft brightness gave promise of the approaching moonrise.

He stole another glance at Cicely. He could just distinguish her delicate profile.

He thought: 'How could she ask me? They wouldn't like it, her friends. Mary Ames mightn't want to come. Martha Caldwell, even. She's been nice to me. I mustn't make it hard for her. And she mustn't know about tonight. Not ever.'

Then a new thought brought pain. If there had been one such scene, there would be others. And she would have to live against that background, keeping up a brave face before the prying world of Sunbury. Perhaps she had already lived through something of the sort. That sad look about her mouth; when she didn't know you were looking.

They had reached the boulevard now, and were standing at the railing over the beach. A little talk had been going on, of course, about this and that—he hardly knew what.

He clenched his fist again, and brought it down on the iron rail.

'Oh,' he broke out—'about Saturday. I forgot. I can't come.'

'Oh, but please——'

'No. Awfully busy. You've no idea. You see Humphrey Weaver and I bought the Gleaner. I told you, didn't I? It's a big responsibility—getting the pay-roll every week, and things like that. Things I never knew about before. I don't believe I was made to be a business man. Lots of accounts and things. Hump's at it all the time—nights and everything. You see we've got to make the paper pay. We've got to! It was losing, when Bob McGibbon had it. People hated him, and they wouldn't advertise. And now we have to get the advertising back.' If we fail in that, we'll go under, just as he did...'

Words! Words! A hot torrent of them! He didn't know how transparent he was.

She stood, her two hands resting lightly on the rail, looking out at the slowly spreading glow in the east.

'I'm so glad aunt asked you,' she said gravely. 'I wanted you to come. I want you to know. Won't you, please?'

He looked at her, but she didn't turn. There was more behind her words. Even Henry could see that. He had been discussed. As a problem. But she didn't say the rest of it.

Then his clumsy little artifice broke down, and the crude feeling rushed to the surface.

'You know I mustn't come!' he cried.

'No,' said she, with that deliberate gravity. 'I don't know that. I think you should.'

'I can't. You don't understand. They wouldn't like it, my being there. They talk about me. They don't speak to me, even.'

'Then oughtn't you to come? Face them? Show them that it isn't true?'

'But that will just make it hard for you.'

She was slow in answering this; seemed to be considering it. Finally she replied with:—

'I don't think I care about that. People have been awfully nice to me here. I'm having a lovely time. But it isn't as if I had always lived here and expected to stay for the rest of my life. My life has been different. I've known a good many different kinds of people, and I've had to think for myself a good deal. No, I'd like you to come. If you don't come—-don't you see?—you're putting me with them. You're making me mean and petty. I don't want to be that way. If—if I'm to see you at all, they must know it.'

'Perhaps, then,' he muttered, 'you'd better not see me at all.'

'Please!'

'Well, I know; but—'

'No. I want to see you. If you want to come. I love your stories. You're more interesting than any of them.'

At this, he turned square around; stared at her. But she, very quietly, finished what she had to say. 'I think you're a genius. I think you're going to be famous. It's—it's exciting to see the way you write stories.... Wait, please! I'm going to tell you the rest of it. Now that we're talking it out, I think I've got to. It was aunt who didn't want to ask you. She likes you, but she thought—well, she thought it might be awkward, and—and hard for you. I told her what I've told you, that I've either got to be your friend before all of them or not at all. And now that she has asked you—don't you see, it's the way I wanted it all along.'

There wasn't another girl in Sunbury who could have, or would have, made quite that speech.

She looked delicately beautiful in the growing light. Her hair was a vignetted halo about her small head.

Henry, staring, his hands clenched at his sides, broke out with:—

'I love you!'

'Oh—h!' she breathed. 'Please!'

Words came from him, a jumble of words. About his hopes, the few thousand dollars that would be his on the seventh of November, when he would be twenty-one, the wonderful stories he would write, with her for inspiration.

Inwardly he was in a panic. He hadn't dreamed of saying such a thing. Never before, in all his little philanderings had he let go like this, never had he felt the glow of mad catastrophe that now seemed to be consuming him. Oh, once perhaps—something of it—years back—when he had believed he was in love with Ernestine Lambert. But that had been in another era. And it hadn't gone so deep as this.

'Anyway'—he heard her saying, in a rather tired voice—'anyway—it makes it hard, of course—you shouldn't have said that—'

'Oh, I am making it hard! And I meant to——'

'—anyway, I think you'd better come. Unless it would be too hard for you.'

There was a long silence. Then Henry, his forehead wet with sweat, his feet braced apart, his hands gripping the rail as if he were holding for his life, said, with a sudden quiet that she found a little disconcerting:—

'All right. I'll come.... Your aunt said a quarter past six, didn't she?'

'No, six.'