CHAPTER VI.
LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM
“We are lucky. This is the very kind of night we most wish for our stroll and sail.” Marjorie was rejoicing in the beauty of the night as she and Hal walked slowly along over the white sands.
“How could the night be anything but perfect with you home again, Marjorie?” Hal Macy glanced down at the white-clad girl walking beside him as though he contemplated stopping and gathering her in his arms.
“It might be raining torrents, and still I’d have just come home,” Marjorie answered in the matter-of-fact tone which had once been Hal’s despair. She cast a swift roguish upward glance at her adoring fiancé from under her long curling lashes.
“But it isn’t. It couldn’t be,” Hal tenderly asserted “Say it again, dear. That you are glad to see me; to be walking this old beach again with me. That——”
“I do love to walk this old beach with you—but not too far behind the others. That’s the way Connie and Laurie used to do, and then we used to laugh at them,” Marjorie gaily assured. “Come on, let’s hurry.” She ran playfully ahead of Hal, a radiantly pretty figure in the white moonlight.
Hal overtook her in a few long, purposeful strides, saying: “You can’t escape me, beautiful moonbeam girl. You are all in white just as you were on that other night last year when you wouldn’t let me tell you that I loved you. You’ve the same kind of soft white scarf over your shoulders, and two stars for eyes. It’s you instead of the moonlight who lures my poor heartstrings out of me.”
“You have never forgotten that moonlight verse, have you?” Marjorie said lightly. She refused to say that she was pleased to know he had not forgotten it.
“How could I forget it? You quoted it to me on the unhappiest night of my life. Afterward I quoted it you on the happiest night. Is it a wonder—”