Hugh suddenly turned over and lay prone in the sand, stretched to his full length, his face on his folded arms. There was a space when he might have been dead. He was lying in the dark. Darkness of body, darkness of soul, darkness of mind. Time was lost. Then he felt the shore under him. Earth. And the sun on his back, on his neck. Out of death he had been tossed up—onto the shore of life. He lay, light as the dark waves that had swept him here, and buoyant with peace. Clean swept of all the dark. Purged of desire too. He was on a new shore. A new existence opened to him, a free man.
“I would rather have had violets.” He remembered Ariel so vividly, standing before him in the white coat, her voice and face passionately earnest. It was the only time he had ever seen her passionate about anything, except that close-shut stone-like passion of anger against Joan that Sunday, when Joan had brought Schwankovsky to call and had let him blame Hugh for ‘Noon’s’ having been relegated to the attic, and said no word about her own part in it. That was passion, if you like, but shut-in, angry.... “I would rather have had the violets,” that was passion outflowing. Beautiful.... Daring.... But he had given Joan the violets, and, he had thought, for all time. Now, however,—glory be! Joan had tossed them back. Definitely. Finally. They were his to give again....
Joan touched his shoulder, lightly, pityingly. He started, for he had forgotten she was there. He looked at her with surprise.
“Gosh! I thought I was alone!” He mumbled it like a boy who is caught day-dreaming by an elder, and with the same flushed shamedness. And then, in his more natural voice, “I say, excuse me, Joan.”
The queer expression that swept Joan’s features was not intelligible to him. But instinctively he knew that he had never seen its like before in her face. It was the shadow of a strange consternation.
“You forgot I was here!... Hugh!”
“I was imagining things,” he tried to explain, and made it worse than it need have been. “Kid stuff.... Desert islands, adventure.... New lands, you know.... I thought—” But he saw that he was offending her, and struggled for something else to talk about. “See here,” he blurted, “does this sunlight remind you of Clare’s? It does me. And the green of that water! It’s Bermudian.”
Joan’s head and shoulders were turned away. He had trouble in catching her words. She was saying, “Crowell Fuller was telling me last night at dinner that he thinks we’ve vastly over-rated the importance of Gregory Clare. He bought two of the paintings himself and grants he’s important—but not so important. It’s a pity, and Michael will be disappointed. For Fuller could hold up Michael’s hands so substantially, if he only saw eye to eye. He’s the one person—over here—in a position to. And he’s not doing it.”
She was cool, impersonal. She might have been talking to some one she had just met at a tea, except for that turned-away shoulder, the averted face.
“But does it really matter—now?” Hugh asked, genuinely surprised. “The Metropolitan’s bought a bunch of ’em. There were none left untaken after the third day of the exposition. Ariel has more money from them than even her father dreamed of,—enough, if it’s managed at all well, to secure her a free, even opulent life by ordinary standards. So what can Crowell Fuller or any other person do now to spoil things? You’re certainly borrowing trouble, Joan.”