The two friends were walking about in an open space of lawn before a house built like an English manor house. The house had fallen into partial decay; on this spring day pale green tendrils of ivy climbed the old walls, in the eaves birds were building their nests, here and there bits of the stone were crumbling away.
"We shall never have the money to rebuild the place and have the house appear as it must have a hundred years ago, but I am not altogether sorry. When Anthony found the old place was for sale and the whole of the little island he told me that if we bought it I must never expect this. We only hope to keep it from further destruction."
"You don't mean that you actually own the whole of this island, Betty, all these magnificent trees, the blue lagoon, the shore line with its view of the sea? Let us walk down to the lagoon and rest for a few moments. I am more tired than I realized after last night's journey. As soon as it is warm enough I shall crawl into a small boat and anchor myself in the lagoon for days and nights, when you have grown weary of my society. This might be known as a place of heavenly rest. In sailing across to the island so late yesterday afternoon, I only had a brief glimpse of the lagoon, which cuts into the island from the bay does it not, as if it were an arm reaching into the shore."
Betty Graham nodded.
"Yes, the island is nearly a complete, circle. One can start from a bank of the lagoon, follow the shore line and return to the opposite bank. Originally the lagoon was to form an anchorage for boats without having to depend on the tides. Once the channel was dug the water has forced its way in until the lagoon has become surprisingly deep. You must promise me to be careful, Polly. I can well imagine your dreaming in your boat and being carried out into the bay and then on toward the sea."
"Well, dear, would it be a bad way of ending things? Yet I believe I would rather float into your blue lagoon from the sea than away from it. I wonder if the depth of the water makes it appear blue as the waters in the Tropics? Please tell the Camp Fire girls to be careful. What a magical place to bring a lot of people together in! I was sorry not to come to you with the Camp Fire girls, but had to give a half dozen more performances of 'A Tide in the Affairs', before my season ended. It was difficult at best, Betty, dear, to close things up while the play was in the height of its popularity. I never could have managed save that you and Richard saw to it that in my original contract I was to be released from playing in the spring. I am supposed to put the same play on next fall, yet I really don't wish to. I was never enthusiastic over it."
"I was not either, Polly, as I told you. Why not play something else? It was never big enough for you!"
"All very well, Betty Graham, but you know nothing of the difficulty of discovering a worth-while play in accord with one's personality or talents. The good fortune of a real play comes only once or twice in a lifetime."
Mrs. Graham hesitated.
"Polly, while you are here do me a favor. In a rash moment I told Allan Drain, our young poet-playwright, to bring the manuscript of his latest effort and that if you were in a good humor you might permit him to read it to you. There is no reason to believe his play would be any worse than other plays one has seen. The boy is very ambitious and I think clever and I have invited him for several weeks, so you will have a chance to rest beforehand."