"Miss Pocahontas!"
"I thought we dropped the 'Miss' by agreement some while back? And if I choose to be a handmaiden to temperament? If I happen to believe in the claims of temperament, and want my share in its later rewards and glories? Marcus and I understand each other, my dear; not for nothing have we thrashed out every step of the way. And now kiss me again. Our train leaves at midnight for the East, and from there we sail at once for our semi-tropical islands in their bluest of seas."
They were gone, and the guests were departed. Aunt Juanita in her wedding-gown of appalling magenta brocade and passamenterie, and Uncle Bruce in his pepper-and-salt everyday suit, were gone off to their room. There were left Cousin Maria Buxton, who was spending the night and who had on her famous dress of Brussels lace that had done service for ten years and so she claimed, was good to do it for ten more, Selina of the pale, pale hair and paler green dress, Miss Boswell in her silvery gray, and the servants in the background putting out lights and gathering up napery and glass and silver from the scattered tables.
Cousin Maria who had insisted they all sit down for a breathing space and a pow-wow over the evening, was full of gratulation over all points of the affair but the groom. Here she stoutly proclaimed herself pessimistic.
"Juanita's gone and so we can talk. Marcus has followed his own bent ever since the hour she brought him into the world and returned to her own engrossments. He personifies unthwarted, undeterred individuality. The sort of thing they tell me young people are all beginning to clamor for these days. I don't know myself; my own minded me while they were under my roof, right or wrong; it was my way. But to get back to Marcus. Pocahontas is as adaptable as a person often is, but even so——"
Miss Marcia Boswell, very pleasing in her charming gown, looked undisturbed. "In the first place Pocahontas is probably the only person in the world Marcus relies on to put him right. He's a wonderful idea of her good taste and her judgment. As for Pocahontas, she's gone about the world all her life. She was left by herself at school in Switzerland the first time when she was eight years old. She generally has a perfectly intelligent idea of what a situation demands of her. And also of what she on her side demands of it. I wish most young married people understood what they want as well as these two seem to. Pocahontas and Marcus both see a future man of letters in Marcus. They are entirely one in what they're planning on this basis in life."
When Selina went up to her room, she sat and thought about it all. "Unthwarted and undeterred individuality!" This it was then in Marcus which she had called selfishness! Was it selfishness, nevertheless, under another name? Or was it the courage of a pronounced character? And were young people these days beginning to clamor for it? And was it better or worse for them who secured it?
Selina sat and thought. She wanted, Oh, she wanted to find—truth.
Selina and her aunt and uncle went home the next day. She watched the flying scene from the car window: the swirling, turbulent creek whose rocky bed the track followed; the towering walls of limestone cliffs mounting from the foaming, brawling water, their ledges white with dogwood and rosy with red-bud and green like Selina's own pretty dress, with the pale verdure of April.