“Ah, yes. It is more becoming to old age,” sighed Leila, then chuckled. “As ancient, tottering P. G.’s we are so merciful!”
“That’s one explanation. It will do as well as another,” laughed Marjorie.
“We have an old Irish saw that runs: ‘What is the gain in beating a knave after the hangman has him?’” Leila lightly quoted the quaint Celtic inquiry.
“What is the use? That is exactly the question,” Marjorie smiled in sympathy with the pertinent old query. “Leslie Cairns has made things far harder for herself than for us.”
The two girls fell silent after Marjorie’s remark. Both were thinking of the past five years in which Leslie Cairns had figured so unpleasantly. Neither cared to continue the conversation with Leslie as the chief topic. The lure of Spring had chained them both to dreamy admiration of her budding beauty.
The automobile had swung into the last lap of the road to Orchard Inn which wound in and out like a pale brown ribbon among orchard belts of fragrant pink and white bloom. Orchard Inn itself to which they would presently come, was a staunch brick relic of colony days, set down in the midst of thick-trunked, gnarled apple trees. Just then they were burgeoning in rose and snow, scented with Spring’s own perfume.
Marjorie had always been a devoted worshipper at the shrine of Spring. The glorious resurrection each year of earth, which had lain stark and drear under winter’s death-like cloak, seemed to her the mystery of mysteries. Today the very sight of brown fields turning to emerald, apple, pear and cherry trees rioting in ravishing bloom, the twitter of nesting birds, busy putting the last touches to their tiny homes, filled her with retrospection. Sight of a peach tree, a luxuriant bouquet of vivid pink gave her a sensation of unutterable sadness.
She understood dimly that her mood of wistful sadness was born of more than her ardent love of Spring. She was still gripped by the supreme tragedy of Brooke Hamilton’s love story. She almost wished she had not read it. She was sure that she could never bear to read it over again. In the next breath she made sturdy resolve that she would. She would not allow herself to be affected to such an extent even by a story as sad as was Brooke Hamilton’s.
Then, without invitation, Hal invaded her thoughts. She was no nearer being in love with him than she had ever been, she reflected with an almost naughty satisfaction. Nevertheless, the moment she began to think about love, he appeared, a blue-eyed image of her mind, always regarding her in the same sorrowful way, in which she had caught him viewing the portrait of the “Violet Girl.”
Marjorie had no suspicion that she had changed a great deal in mind since the evening at Severn Beach when she and Hal had walked together with their friends along the moonlit sands and Constance had sung “Across the Years.” She had listened to the sadly beautiful song, which had breathed of blighted hopes and love’s misunderstandings without either sentimentality or sentiment of mind. Hal had characterized her faithfully when he had told her that she had not yet grown up.