“I don’t know quite what it means, Mrs. Devoe—except that she and I like very much to be together—and we are both going to France soon. It may be a very long time before we can spend a day together again. It seemed to me we had to have the day. And all I want of you is to let me have part of it with you—and part of it with her—and understand that I’m so glad to be near someone who feels like a mother that I’d have come five times as far for one hour with you.”
She nodded. “I know. We have missed each other. But before we begin our talk—it’s just the hour for the morning swim. Will you and Miss Ray go in, while I sit on the beach under my big sun umbrella and watch you? I’m not going in now; I had an early morning dip.”
“Can you manage it—for me?”
“Of course. I keep several extra suits here, and Sarah has them all in the nicest order for guests.”
It was more than he could have imagined hoping for when the subject was first mentioned. What could have been more glorious than to dash down the beach, and find Jane, in the prettiest little blue-and-gray swimming clothes in the world, already floating out on the crest of a great wave? All his early sea training came back to him as he plunged under a lazy comber, and swam eagerly out to join the blue-and-gray figure with the white arms and the wonderful laugh he had never heard make such music from her lips before.
“If not another thing happens to-day, this will have made it quite perfect,” Jane declared, swimming with smooth strokes by his side toward shore, after a half-hour of alternate work and play in the blue depths.
“It certainly will. I’m a new man already—feel like a sea-god, in spite of aching muscles. It takes an entirely new set to swim with, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely. What a pity one can’t have swimming pools brought to one’s door, like fish, when the wish takes one, on a July day. What a dear your Mrs. Devoe is to think of this the very instant we appear. I don’t wonder you love her, she’s so very attractive to look at, and so young, in spite of her years.”
“There’s nobody like her—you’ll be confident of that when you’ve known her just one day. What I owe her—I could never tell you—and hardly myself.”
Jane was sure of it. She began to understand at once certain qualities she had long since noted in Robert Black. The explanation now was easy: he had been under unconscious training from Mrs. Devoe, his friend. She had been to him, for those five years during which he had served his first parish, not only the mother he had missed but the stimulus he had needed to bring out his best attributes of mind and heart. That she had done this for many another, first and last, lessened not a whit his debt to her. Somehow he had never been more conscious of this debt than he was to-day, upon seeing her again after the interval of more than a year.