Three couples passed by, arm in arm, youth and maiden, going for a promenade on the pier. They deported themselves in just the customary Middle Western summer resort manner. The couple ahead would confer in whispers. Then a simultaneous laugh would disturb the lazy stillness of the street. And then it might be that the girl would turn as she walked and whisper something in the ear of the girl behind her, who would laugh out also, at whatever it was the young man ahead had originally confided to his partner. And the companion of this second young lady would look bored and very much left out, while perhaps the young man behind him might mockingly exclaim that secrets in company weren't polite. Then the next minute all six would be singing the chorus of some contemporary rag. And when that was done there would be another chorus. Or else the young lady ahead would shout back to the young lady in the rear and demand of her in tones of such vehemence that they could be shared by all the town, whether she'd heard from John yet—or Harry or Jim or Robert, as the case might be. Whereupon the young man in the middle, who had been mocked by the young man in the rear, would very likely turn and grin, feeling, if rather obscurely, that the frivolous odds of the hour were now more evenly distributed.
Louise glanced at these careless, gay young persons as they passed, and a feeling of comfortable security crept into her heart.
"Well, I'm glad I'm past all that!" she thought with a sigh. "They all act this way at one time or another, and it's certainly a blessing when it's over!"
She turned and looked after the noisy spooners as they bent their steps toward the pier. Suddenly, it seemed for no reason at all, she thought of Leslie. He seemed, quite vividly, to be right here beside her for a moment. It was ever so curious. She wondered why she should think of him so vividly just at this moment. Presently it occurred to her the reason was simply that Leslie, though so young, wasn't boisterous and silly, like the hoodlums she had just passed. No, she could not fancy his ever having behaved like that in his life. Nor could she conceive of his having yet to go through any such gauche, vapid period. With her he had always been very serious. Of course, she was a little older. But Leslie's whole nature was serious, she argued, and somehow—somehow deep. She was in the mood now, perversely, to do him the most elaborate justice. Yes, she thought he might be called, in a way, really deep. Certainly she had never known any one like him. She did not, just then, consider that she had never known any one just like Richard, either, when it came to that—or even any one like Harold Gates. All she could seem to think of, for the moment, was that Leslie had come to fill a unique place in her life.
A feeling of tenderness crept upon her. Yes, they had grown intimate during the short span of their acquaintance. She had been rather lavish. It was Leslie's first summer on the Point. Vaguely she wished it might all have been otherwise, that he might have come into her life sooner, or that.... Ah, what was it she wanted?
His voice seemed suddenly ringing in her ears, as it had rung when he cried: "Friends!"
And she sighed.
Oh, Eros, wicked god! She is waiting for one lover, and you torment her with others! You revive for her sweet, irrevocable loves of the past, when one would think the present love enough....