The wind is floating through
And oh, the night, my darling,
Is sighing, sighing for you, for you.”
Her emotion was mastering her, so that her voice came forth in bursts of gorgeous tone or died away in a tremulous whisper; but it carried a quality that made her listeners look uncomfortable, as conventional people tend to do when they feel that their emotions are being aroused in a public place.
She ended, and there was a small moment of recapitulation before the polite murmurs started again. She left the piano and crossed to Grant—veiled under the general chatter, it was the first moment they had to speak to each other.
“I sang to you,” she said; and the Chinese masks which they had both been assuming all day, made easier by the breath-taking weather and the environment, fell away from them as they looked at each other.
“You must always sing to me, Joy—your singing’s you—and I can’t bear to have anyone else even get a part of you.”
She smiled up at him, seeing only the worship of the idea. The callers stayed to a “simple” Sunday supper of three courses and “on the sides,” then left the Grey family to settle down to a repletely quiet Sunday evening. Not so Betty; she announced that “Mr. Cortland” was coming to take her riding, and Joy and Grant could come along too. Mrs. Grey made a few quiet remarks about the ordinary people who rode Sunday evenings, but “Mr. Cortland,” Betty’s newly-acquired fiancé, arrived about that time, and the four set off without even a pretense of asking Mr. and Mrs. Grey to accompany them. They went in “Mr. Cortland’s” racer, which necessitated three-in-one seat and one-on-the-floor, always a piquant combination.
“No use taking a larger car,” said the fiancé, in a bored-man-of-the-world tone: “everyone would scrap as to who wouldn’t drive, and I’d have to, and I can’t drive with one arm—I can only stop.”
“Oh, Nick, you do tear off the worst line,” trilled Betty. “Come on—take the Jerusalem road—of course we’ll go to Nantasket. I want to ride in the roller-coasters!”