Jean's duties were light and she and Gregory spent a part of each day together. The quiet tea-room was now a thing of the past, so far in the past that Jean smiled whenever she remembered how homelike it had once seemed. They had long, lazy afternoons on the sands of nearby beaches, making comments on the human shadows that moved beyond their own world of reality. They chattered like children or were silent as the mood dictated. They had dozens of gay meals, like the first they had prepared on the night that Margaret and Puck had left. And quiet hours in the warm stillness of the summer nights, with the voice of the city coming in echoes over the dusty trees of the Park. These were the best of all. In those moments it seemed to Jean that their souls mingled, and that the law of each human soul's separateness was set aside for their benefit.
Hampered only by such demands as Jean felt to be her duty to Martha, the weeks slipped by. Ringed about by their freedom, Jean felt that their love was striking into a deeper and deeper reality. A quality of peace and security enveloped it that she did not know had been lacking before. Its roots went down below her personality, the accident of her "Jeanness," down into the stuff of life itself. Often, when she and Gregory sat silent, Jean felt that this love was not theirs at all; they were the possessed, not the possessors.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The third week in August, Dr. Mary returned. She came without warning, so that, late in the afternoon, when Jean came rushing in to start dinner, she stopped, staring at the figure upon the couch with surprise so intense that it deprived her of motion.
"Sunstroke, Jean?" Mary threw back the two braids of white hair, drew the hideous blue dressing gown closer and put on her slippers.
"Mary!"
"The same. Come in and sit down, won't you?"
Jean smiled and managed to get her arms about Mary and hug her.
"Well, that's more like it." Mary paddled back to her couch and Jean dropped beside her. "My, but it's good to be home again."
"We've missed you," Jean ventured and when she heard the ease of her own tone, a little courage came back. "Now, begin at the beginning and tell me the whole thing."