She finished her letters, which were not very satisfactory after all. How could one write real letters when one's pen was writing one thing and one's thoughts were darting hither and thither about very different business? She threw herself in the chaise longue, not yet ready to dress and go down to join the others. There was nobody there she cared to talk to, somehow. Alan was not there. Nobody else mattered. It had come to that.
Idly she picked up a volume of verse that lay beside her on the table and fluttered its pages, seeking something to meet her restless mood. Presently in her vagrant seeking she chanced upon a little poem—a poem she read and reread, twice, three times.
"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear.
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I make moan.
The heart in my bosom is not my own!
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!"
Tony laid the book face down upon the table, still open at the little verse. The shadows were growing long out there in the dusk. The late afternoon sun was pale honey color. A soft little breeze stirred the branches of a weeping willow tree and set them to swaying languorously. Unseen birds twittered happily among the shrubbery. A golden butterfly poised for a moment above the white holly hocks and then drifted off over the flaming scarlet poppies and was lost to sight.
It was all so beautiful, so serene. She felt that it should have come like a benediction, cooling the fever of her tired mind, but it did not. It could not even drive the words of the poem out of her head.
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!
CHAPTER XIII
BITTER FRUIT
From the North Station in Boston Alan Massey directed his course to a small cigar store on Atlantic Avenue. A black eyed Italian lad in attendance behind the counter looked up as he entered and surveyed him with grave scrutiny.
"I am Mr. Massey," announced Alan. "Mr. Roberts is expecting me. I wired."