And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

"Why?" Flip asked. "Why?" She looked longingly after the boat for a moment and then she looked at the mountains that seemed to be climbing up into the sky. They looked like the mountains that she had often made up out of cloud formations during the long slow summers in Connecticut, only she was in Switzerland now; these were real mountains; this was real snow on their shining peaks. "Well—" she stood up, dislodging Ariel. "I'd better go back now. Mrs. Jackman will think I'm off weeping somewhere."

Paul shook her hand. His grip was firm and strong. "Ariel doesn't usually take to people the way he has to you. When Ariel doesn't like people I know I'm never going to like them either. He has very good taste. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime."

He smiled and Flip smiled back, murmuring shyly, "I hope so."

"My father and I are going to spend the winter up the mountain somewhere," Paul said. "My mother's a singer and she has to go off on a tour for all winter. They've been wandering about the chateau. They like it because that's where my father proposed to my mother." He smiled again and then his face changed and became so serious that Flip looked at him in surprise. "I don't like it," he explained, "because I don't like any place that's been a prison." Then he said, trying to speak lightly, "Do you know that poem of the English poet, Byron? The Prisoner of Chillon? It's all about a man who was a prisoner in the chateau."

"Yes," Flip said. "We studied it in English last year. I didn't like it much but I think I shall pretend that my school is a prison and I am the prisoner and at Christmas my father will rescue me."

"If he doesn't," Paul said, "I will."

"Thank you," Flip said. "Are you—do you go to school?"

The same odd strained look came into Paul's eyes that had darkened them when he mentioned prisons. "No," he said. "I'm not going to school right now."

"Well ... good-bye," Flip said.

"Good-bye." Paul shook hands with her again. She turned clumsily and patted Ariel's head; then she started back up the path towards the chateau of Chillon.