Just beyond the Big Dipper he saw the star he had given Sally Winthrop. It smiled reassuringly at him.
“What I’ve learned this summer,” he said, “is that, after all, the clear sky and those stars are as much a part of New York as the streets and high buildings below them. And when you live up there a little while you forget about the twelve hundred or the ten thousand. Those details don’t count up there. Do you see that?”
“Yes, Don.”
“The trouble with your father, and the trouble with you, and the trouble with me, until a little while ago, is that we didn’t get out here in the park enough where the stars can be seen. I’m pretty sure, if I’d been sitting here with your father, he’d have felt different.”
She was doing as he bade her and keeping her eyes raised. She saw the steady stars and the twinkling stars and the vast purple depths. So, when she felt his arm about her, that did not seem strange.
“It’s up there we’ll be living most of the time,” he was saying.
“Yes, Don.”
“And that’s all free. The poorer you are, the freer it is. That’s true of a lot of things. You’ve no idea the things you can get here in New York if you haven’t too much money. Your father said that if you don’t have cash you go without, when as a matter of fact it’s when you have cash you go without.”
She lowered her eyes to his. What he was saying sounded topsy-turvy.