"That's true. Do you think you'll marry him?"
"What's your opinion on that matter, Grandma Chazy?"
"I think you'd regret it all your life; he's only a boy."
"Yes, but he's a good fellow."
"You said that before."
Glen had kept away for a week or so after the moonlight circus party, and in that time became morbid and melancholy. Indiana dominated him completely. He racked his brain, hour after hour, trying to remember the exact words in which she had uttered such and such a remark, with her exact tone of voice and the exact expression of her eyes at the time. Sometimes in his sleep he heard her calling "Glen dear! Glen dear! Glen dear!" her childish name for him, in a helpless, frightened voice. He would awaken with a terrible fear that she might be ill or in trouble. Compared with this awful anxiety oppressing him in the night, his past misery seemed nothing. He resolved that if Indiana only kept well and happy he would ask nothing more of life. Again, he heard her laughing in his dreams, mockingly, tantalizingly; laughing, laughing, laughing, until his brain reeled, and he thought, "This is the laugh that drives men mad." Then, when taking bicycle rides on the moonlight nights of his week's absence, her face seemed to flash upon him suddenly in dark places, like that of a sweet ghost. Haunted like this, the idea of seeing her in reality once more was like the conventional promise of Heaven. He resolved to resume their old footing. "Indiana wishes it, and anything is better than not to see her." He appeared again at the model farm, humble and deferential to Indiana's slightest wish, grateful for her every look and word. With her tender heart and warm sympathies she pitied him intensely. She tried to establish their old comradeship. The loyal little soul hated to lose a friend.
Glen felt life was worth living once more. There is a magic flower, tiny, and blue as the sky. This is the forget-me-not bloom of hope. It sheds a sweet and subtle fragrance which enchants the soul, and charms the eyes, so that they see a wonderful light on all things. But when the flower perishes, there is an end to the spell. The glamour fades before the eyes, the soul is seized with an aching grief. But the witch-flower of hope will bloom again, if it is not plucked by the root.
"I'm getting a little bit tired of it myself, here," remarked Mrs. Bunker. "Well, it'll be time to pack up soon; I expect to enjoy myself this summer."
Indiana, watching the rain, forebore to answer. There were times when Mrs. Bunker's constant desire for pleasure rather palled on her.
Mid-summer at a fashionable seaside resort proved to be merely a repetition of other summers. Indiana enjoyed herself, after the manner of the young and thoughtless; dancing, bathing, flirting, and laughing. But after the glare of the sea and the kaleidoscope of life on the shore, after falling asleep every night to the echoes of the very latest dance music, mingled with the eternal dash of the waves, the woods beckoned her invitingly.