"But—you would rather I didn't?" he urged.
"No, indeed," still in the same indifferent way. "I should have company, if I found it dull."
"Then let us go down by the same train—will you, Ida?"
As far as she remembered, it was the first time that he had ever addressed her thus by her name. She looked up and smiled slightly.
"If you like," was her answer.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MISSING YEARS
"Why shouldn't life be always like this?" said Waymark, lying on the upper beach and throwing pebbles into the breakers, which each moment drew a little further back and needed a little extra exertion of the arm to reach them. There was small disturbance by people passing, here some two miles up the shore eastward from Hastings. A large shawl spread between two walking-sticks stuck upright gave, at this afternoon hour, all the shade needful for two persons lying side by side, and, even in the blaze of unclouded summer, there were pleasant airs flitting about the edge of the laughing sea. "Why shouldn't life be always like this? It might be—sunshine or fireside—if men were wise. Leisure is the one thing that all desire, but they strive for it so blindly that they frustrate one another's hope. And so at length they have come to lose the end in the means; are mad enough to set the means before them as in itself an end."
"We must work to forget our troubles," said his companion simply.