“Why not?” said her companion. “Come West with me—you and she—to San Francisco this summer. I’ve a water purification job across the bay in Marin County. It would do your aunt a lot of good to see California. There’ll be days when I’ll have nothing to do—waiting around while tests are going on and contracts are being drawn. We could go to Palo Alto and Monterey and Lake Tahoe. Perhaps farther.”
Mermaid considered.
“I have a particular wish to visit San Francisco,” she said. “It has to do with ghosts. I’ll try to persuade her, Dickie.”
Mr. Hand was elated. They rose and went out into the coolness of the springtime night. They walked, and found themselves presently in Washington Square. Something in the moment took Dick Hand by the throat. In a shadowy lane, a little apart from the benches of people, his words dulled by the rumble of the Fifth Avenue omnibuses, he took Mermaid’s hand, his fingers closing over it with intensity.
“Can’t we—can’t we make it a honeymoon trip, Mermaid?” he asked.
He could just see the slight movement of her silhouetted head. She murmured: “I’m afraid not, Dickie. I—I want to be very sure.”
He unclasped her hand slowly and they walked to one of the green monsters, vain of their size and path and importance, which take people uptown.
II
College closed. Mermaid went home. She found Keturah Hand in “poor health,” but a diagnosis of any specific complaint seemed difficult.
“Old age and remorse, my girl,” her aunt assured her. “Thinking of all the things I’ve done I might better not have done, or have done differently.”