And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

Solvei broke in, "Not at the table. Save it for the Common Room if you feel you have to tell it."

Flip looked at Solvei in gratitude. Mlle. Dragonet at the head table stood up before Gloria could retort; all the chairs in the dining room were scraped back and the girls filed out.

4

On Sunday afternoons all the girls were supposed to spend a rest period in their rooms, but after the rest period there would be two hours when Flip could try to escape and go back to the deserted chateau. She sat curled up on her bed with the dog-eared calendar she carried around with her in her blazer pocket and looked at the small block of days that was marked off and then at all the days and days that stretched out to be lived through somehow before the Christmas holidays and her father would finally come. Sometimes she was afraid that the Christmas holidays would never be reached. She knew already that the one certain thing in an uncertain world was that time always passed; but as day followed day, each one exactly like the other, she felt that nothing, not even time, could put an end to their unbearable monotony.

—Oh, please God, please, God, make Christmas come quickly, Flip prayed, her hand still moving softly over her dog-eared calendar; and because time did not wheel faster in its vast circle for her she became filled with despair and homesickness and bitterness at her misery and she shoved the book she had brought up with her off the bed so that it fell on the floor with a thud. Across the room Gloria yawned noisily over her required weekly letter to her mother; Erna and Jackie, as usual, were whispering and giggling together. "They're so childish," Esmée was always saying to Gloria, but she was careful to keep on good terms with Jackie because Jackie's father was a movie director.

Flip leaned over and picked up her book, smoothing out its pages in swift apology, and waited for the bell.

5

She hurried out of the room after Quiet Hour, got her coat from the Cloak Room, and started up the mountain. She knew that the others would think she had gone to the chapel. She ran almost until she stood at the edge of the forest where the trees thinned out and mingled with the underbrush that surrounded the chateau, and there was the chateau as it had been the day before, cold and beautiful and deserted. She stood looking at the grey stones and at the birds, her heart thumping; but no Ariel came rushing towards her to knock her down with his greeting, and after a moment she began pushing her way to the chateau, jumping like a startled woods animal each time a twig snapped or the wind moved in the high grasses. Just as she had almost neared the decaying walls of the building she heard a low whine and there was Ariel standing in the shadow of a shutter that hung drunkenly. The shadow seemed to move and she saw that Paul was there, too, holding Ariel by the collar.

"Paul!" she called softly.

For a moment she thought Paul was going to go back into the chateau; then he stepped out of the shadow of the shutter and held out his hand in greeting.