"And then, perhaps, we'll begin all over again."
"No doubt we will." Jean pushed back her chair, and leaning for a moment with both palms spread on the table edge, smiled down at Jerome. "In the meantime, there are the piers."
Jerome did not move. "Let's not do them to-night. It's wonderful up here and 'a long, long time' the piers shall last."
"But I haven't another evening this week. And you go on your vacation the fifteenth, don't you? It would be great to cover them all by then."
Jerome frowned. "I suppose it would."
The mood was gone now, anyhow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
As they went through the small side door, the band at the far end of the pier was just tuning up. Two powerful arc lamps shed their hard white light on the men, and the rows of already filled chairs about the bandstand. The place smelled of rope and tar and dust, but the lower end of the great shed was open and a faint coolness from the water penetrated for a short distance. Through the opening, the red and green lanterns of docked ships winked enticingly and at the next pier a great steamer creaked on her hawsers, as the water, washing against her sides, whispered of distant lands. Beyond the range of white light, boys and girls sauntered hand in hand, while, in still darker corners, couples stood whispering or silent.
"This—after ten hours a day with your eyes glued to your machine, afraid to move in case the needle pins you to it forever! A blinding web of machinery and then a few little hours for all your suppressed youth and longing to bubble and boil, here in the darkness, a dark full of lapping water and the breath of far-away lands. Is there anything here about sticking to your job and repressing and repressing and repressing, until you grow too dull to care?"
Jerome did not answer. His eyes followed Jean's to a thin, rouged girl and a narrow-chested, ferret-eyed boy vanishing into the farthest shadow. They stopped beside a tower of bales and the boy took both the girl's hands in his. The great steamer strained impatiently like a strong lover resenting the whimpering little waves, eager for the billows beyond. Jerome suddenly felt the heat like hot fingers on his body.