Further down the beach they came to an Inn, where they sat on a balcony and drank tea with rice-cakes, and watched the sun sink lingeringly through bank after bank of cloud into the very ocean, taking with it suddenly the day.
They went to one of the play-places on the beach, and danced and dined, and rode on childish and breath-taking roller-coasting journeys. And at midnight, still unwearied, still flooded with the joy of being alive and together, they wandered back up the shore, to its remoter haunts, past the piers gleaming with lights, into the darkness wanly illumined by a young moon that climbed up behind the ragged rocks to shoreward.
“Let’s come here tomorrow night and build a bonfire,” said Rose-Ann. “And bring our supper.”
They lay on the sand, still warm from the blaze of day, under the cool wind from the sea, glad to have put off the testing of their happiness another day.
They went back to her apartment.
“What about this alleged poet of yours, Rose-Ann?” he asked casually.
“Eugene?”
“I didn’t know his name....”
“Well ... he doesn’t count, if that’s what you mean.”
And she kissed him, as if anxious to prove herself all his. Tonight there should be no cloud on their happiness.