“I love it. It’s so perfect”—Marjorie paused—“as perfect as love. It’s true love’s own symbol.”
“True love,” Jerry repeated musingly. “I never dreamed for a minute when Danny and I used to squabble and play jokes on each other as high school pals that I’d ever love him enough to marry him. You know I always said I was never never going to be married.” For a moment she bent her face over the mass of exquisite white blooms, hiding it from view. She presently raised it from the bouquet with: “Times have certainly changed, Beanie. They certainly have changed.”
“It looks that way, Macy,” Marjorie gaily agreed. Gradually her smile faded. “Jerry,” she began slowly, “you know you and I have never talked much to each other about Hal—and—and—the way things were for so long between us before—well—before I discovered that I really had a heart for love. At that time I was relieved because you tried never to let me think you were disappointed because I didn’t then love Hal. I felt that you were, and I often wished to have a talk with you about him. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak of him, even to you. I was so sure that I could never learn to love him in the beautiful way I believed he loved me. Captain was the only one I confided my troubles to.”
“You weren’t to blame because you didn’t know your own heart,” Jerry made loyal defense. “I used to feel a little out of patience with you at times. It hurt me like sixty to see Hal try to buck up, determined not to show what a crusher you had handed him. Still, I couldn’t blame you, either. Love’s the world’s great mystery, even if it is love that sends the old ball dizzying around,” Jerry finished with slangy philosophy.
In spite of her practical tone Marjorie glimpsed a glint of tenderness in her chum’s eyes as she gently deposited the white armful of fragrance upon the table again.
“I’ve not yet forgiven myself for having hurt Hal so. Whenever I think of how nearly I lost him forever by my own blindness, it sends my heart away down for a minute. It will take a lifetime of devotion on my part to make it up to him. We’re so happy together now. It doesn’t seem as though I deserved such happiness,” Marjorie ended half wistfully.
“Shucks,” was Jerry’s comforting opinion. “You deserved happiness more than any one of us did.”
“Oh, no,” Marjorie shook her head gravely. “No one deserves to be happier than you and Danny are going to be. You two just simply drifted beautifully into love. There haven’t been any misunderstandings, or heartaches, in your romance. It’s been ideal.”
“That’s so.” Jerry considered Marjorie’s assertion with a half embarrassed flush. It was the witching, intimate hour for confidences between the chums. “I guess we began to miss each other a lot at about the same time. I missed Danny dreadfully during my senior year at Hamilton. When we came to compare notes, last summer at Severn Beach, we found we weren’t crazy about having to be so far away from each other and—that’s the way it all happened,” she confessed half shyly. “Danny wanted to ask me to marry him on that night when we went for a sail in the Oriole and Hal sang the ‘Venetian Boat Song’ with a kind of heart-break in his voice that he hadn’t the least idea was there. You missed it entirely, but it got both Danny and me. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.” Jerry made an eloquently reminiscent gesture. “He told me after we became engaged that he hadn’t the courage to ask me that night to marry him, for fear I might turn him down as you had Hal.”
“That was a night I had some very sad memories of, long afterward, when I came to a realization that I really loved Hal, but too late. I surmised he was going to ask me to marry him before I went back to Hamilton, and I was determined not to give him an opportunity. Wasn’t I stony-hearted though?” Marjorie laughed rather tremulously.