"So am I," said Joan. "Just look at those violets and the way the leaves are bursting."
"I know. Great, isn't it? Are you going anywhere?"
"No. I've nowhere to go."
"Same here. Let's go together."
And they both laughed, and the squirrel that had come to meet Joan darted off with a sour look. He had anticipated a fat meal of peanuts. He was out of it now, he saw, and muttered whatever was the squirrel equivalent for a swear-word.
The boy and girl took the path that ran round the outskirts of the wood, swung into step and chimed into the cantata of spring with talk and laughter.
There had been rather a long silence.
Joan was sitting with her back against the trunk of a fallen tree, with her hands clasped round her knees. She had tossed her hat aside, and the sunlight made her thick brown hair gleam like copper. They had come out at another aerie on the hill, from which a great stretch of open country could be seen. Her eyes were turned as usual in the direction of New York, but there was an expression of contentment in them that would have startled all the old people and things at home.
Martin Gray was lying full stretch on the turf with his elbows up and his chin on his left fist. He had eyes for nothing but the vivid girl whom he had found so unexpectedly and who was the most alive thing that he had ever seen.
During this walk their chatter had been of everything under the sun except themselves. Both were so frankly and unaffectedly glad to be able to talk at all that they broke into each other's laughing and childish comments on obvious things and forgot themselves in the pleasure of meeting. But now the time had come for mutual confidences, and both, in the inevitable young way, felt the desire to paint the picture of their own particular grievance against life which should make them out to be the two genuine martyrs of the century. It was now a question of which of them got the first look-in. The silence was deliberate and came out of the fine sense of sportsmanship that belonged to each. Although bursting to pour out her troubles, Joan wanted to be fair and give Martin the first turn, and Martin, equally keen to prove himself the champion of badly treated men, held himself in, in order that Joan, being a woman, should step into the limelight. It was, of course, the male member of the duet who began. A man's ego is naturally more aggressive than a woman's.