“EH? WHO'D you say was there?”
A third murmur.
“WHO? . . . Oh, that Speranzy one? Lote Snow's grandson? The one they used to call the Portygee? . . . Eh? Well, all right, I don't care if he did hear me. If he don't know you're nice and smart and good-lookin', it's high time he did.”
Helen, a trifle embarrassed but laughing, emerged a moment later, and when she had put on her hat she and Albert left the Howes cottage and began their walk home. It was one of those nights such as Cape Codders, year-rounders or visitors, experience three or four times during a summer and boast of the remainder of the year. A sky clear, deep, stretched cloudless from horizon to horizon. Every light at sea or on shore, in cottage window or at masthead or in lighthouse or on lightship a twinkling diamond point. A moon, apparently as big as a barrel-head, hung up in the east and below it a carpet of cold fire, of dancing, spangled silver spread upon the ocean. The sound of the surf, distant, soothing; and for the rest quiet and the fragrance of the summer woods and fields.
They walked rather fast at first and the conversation was brisk, but as the night began to work its spell upon them their progress was slower and there were intervals of silence of which neither was aware. They came to the little hill where the narrow road from West Harniss comes to join the broader highway leading to the Center. There were trees here, a pine grove, on the landward side, and toward the sea nothing to break the glorious view.
Helen caught her breath. “Oh, it is beautiful, beautiful!” she said.
Albert did not answer. “Why don't you talk?” she asked. “What are you thinking about?”
He did not tell her what he was thinking about. Instead, having caught himself just in time, he began telling her of what he had been thinking when his grandfather called him to the telephone.
“Helen,” he said, “I want to ask your advice. I had an astonishing proposal made to me this afternoon. I must make a decision, I must say yes or no, and I'm not sure which to say.”
She looked up at him inquiringly.