it was a subject to which they had come round, almost automatically, at intervals, ever since the letter arrived.
ah, the letter, the fateful letter! the letter advising her that the man to whom she was virtually engaged would put in an appearance on such and such a day!
upon its receipt louise had proceeded with real candour. the letter, or rather the important implication it contained, was discussed at once. oh, yes. she went at once to leslie with her sinister yet thrilling confession. louise needham was fundamentally an honest, an even straight-forward young person. fundamentally: though the roots were not, it is true, always called upon. the mistakes she made were rather faults of judgment than altogether of a slumbering conscience. indeed, there had been numerous occasions when her life would have moved much more smoothly had she been less blunt, or had her personal psychology possessed a few more curves. but this type of downrightness had been sternly inculcated. it was in the blood. the rev. needham maintained that a square, simple, stalwart attitude toward the world was the very cornerstone of[pg 37] security and peaceful living; and he had quotations out of the scriptures to back it up. yes, louise had gone to leslie at once. true, she hadn't just happened to speak about lynndal before—that is, she hadn't quite painted the relationship in its true colours, which naturally amounted to the same thing. as for this silence—well, she would argue that it was in no real sense a deception, because the engagement (there was no ring as yet) wasn't public property. no, it was strictly an affair existing between herself and lynndal. in a way, leslie ought to consider himself honoured to be consulted at all.
"well, he'll be here in a few hours now," mourned the honoured individual as they walked along together through the woods toward crystal lake and the little launch. "then goodnight for me!"
"les, please don't talk like that. you'd think we couldn't even be friends any more."
"friends!" he had been suffered to call her more endearing names throughout the span of the past few weeks.
"i'm sure we'll always be the best sort of friends, leslie."
but he couldn't see it. "i'm going back to the city!" it was about as close to heroics as he ever verged.
and following this highly dramatic climax there was a little space of silence. they walked on, side by side. louise began to realize how unwise she had been.
[pg 38]
this walk through the forest of betsey was ordinarily a very wonderful experience. of course, however, upon this occasion, neither of the young persons concerned was in any mood to appreciate it. for her part, if consulted, louise would reply that she had no time. still, for all that, the experience was (potentially) a delight; for here one discovered a true, unspoiled natural loveliness, even a kind of sylvan grandeur. the way, all underneath greenery thickly arched, wound up and down. from every eminence the neighbouring valleys appeared sunk to an almost ghostly declivity; but from the valleys themselves, the uplands, with their rich tangled approaches, soared grandly toward a heaven invisible for leafy vaulting. at this early hour the summits were a little dusky, while the depressions slept in deep shade. the full, fair rays of the uprising sun shot across the exposed tops of the higher levels of forest, and here and there even the loftier stretches of path would be dappled with furtive annunciatory splashes. in the forest it was cool and buoyantly fresh, though heat was already quivering up off the open stretches of sand skirting the smaller lake. it promised to be one of the warm days of a rather grudging season.
"les," she said finally, "why do you talk about going back to the city?"
"because i don't care to stay up here and...." if concluded, the sentence would have run: "and see[pg 39] you together." but he thought better of it. poise saved him. he compressed his lips.
"oh, les, don't make it so hard for me!"
"you didn't spare me!" he replied grimly.
"what do you mean?" her eyes were a little wide.
"h'm...."
"tell me, les. we can't go on this way." she meant that she would find it uncomfortable—a cloud for her present satisfaction with life.
"you knew how i felt. you knew all about it. yet you didn't send me packing, or try to drop me. you didn't even give me a hint of how things were. do you call that sparing a fellow?"
his arraignment was almost bewildering in its complexity. but she chose one indictment and grappled with it valiantly. "of course i didn't try to drop you. i never treated any man that way!"
"well," he replied dryly, "i wish you had."
"you wish i hadn't had anything to do with you?" such a proposition struck her as unpleasant, to a marked degree—even almost grotesque.
he countered without replying: "didn't you know how much i cared?"
"yes, but my goodness, les, must a girl entirely shun a man to prevent his falling—i mean, to keep him from caring too much?"
"oh, no," he answered with a sharp sigh. "don't mind me. don't mind anything i've said. i guess[pg 40] i'll get over it—especially since it seems that you didn't feel at all the way i did, and i was merely making a fool of myself." it was a cup of highly flavoured bitterness.
"oh, please don't say such a thing as that! you know i told you all along, leslie, that i—that i had a friend in arizona, and i—well, you see i somehow felt you'd understand. i didn't know the things we did—i mean i didn't realize our being together so much meant anything except that we—well, that we liked each other and wanted to be together...."
she felt it was just a little lame, and began laying about for more forcible expression. meanwhile, leslie muttered: "no, those things never do mean any more, i guess."
"but leslie, dear—"
she spoke unwisely. at the familiar word of affection, which had thrilled him so often during the unmolested weeks—that wonderful span shattered by the arrival of the letter from arizona—leslie momentarily forgot about his dark humiliation. he forgot everything but the fact of the woman beside him. he seized her swinging hand; gripped it. and then they paused, further progress along the sun-flecked way seeming inhibited by some subtle agent in league with the emotion which swept over them both.
oh, eros! are your agents everywhere?
from gripping her hand he unexpectedly and rather bafflingly had her in his arms. and she[pg 41] presented, for just that charged moment, no resistance, but relaxed there with a little inarticulate, troubled, withal surrendering cry.
"louise!"
"oh, les!"
when they had kissed he broke the curious spell by demanding, with considerable passion, why, if she really did care, she was so willing to throw him over for another man. it seemed a pivotal question. it seemed an unanswerable one, even, in the light of what had just occurred. but miss needham, now the spell was broken and she could breathlessly begin getting hold of herself again, proved magnificently equal to it. the beauty of the needham logic was just that it could always find an answer to every question, however pivotal—some kind of answer, that is.
"oh, leslie!" she cried. "don't you see? i'm not throwing you over. not the way you want to make it seem. i care for you just the same as—yes, as i ever did! why shouldn't i?" she demanded, with vague defiance. "only i—i suppose some of the things we've done—what we just did.... well, and the other times, aren't—i suppose they wouldn't be quite right if i'm to be formally engaged. but you see i—i've looked upon this engagement—i mean i've looked upon it as not quite settled yet...." she faltered and spoke more thickly, as though getting down to cold facts somehow made the whole business a little tawdry. "i'm[pg 42] not wearing any ring yet, you see," she went on, waving her hand before them a trifle awkwardly, and laughing with constraint. "and as long as mr. barry and i aren't really engaged—not quite in the usual way yet, i mean—i didn't see—i don't see now what harm there is in making—well, new friends."
it was an amazing speech. it was a wonderful speech. he offered no immediate reply to it. what could he say? the fact is, he had never heard just such a speech as this in his life, and found himself, not perhaps unreasonably, a little bit bewildered by it. none of the lessons in feminine psychology he had learned thus far had just prepared leslie for such a speech as this. as abruptly as they had paused, the two now resumed their walk. and from this moment his attitude toward her was also altered.
louise started slightly, as though for the first time fully realizing what had just taken place. she glanced at her wrist watch. it was ten minutes to five by the tiny dial.
"i hope we can make it," she said anxiously. the return to her former preoccupations might have struck a disinterested observer as bizarre, though of course louise wasn't conscious of anything like that. she was not conscious of anything bizarre at all. it was really extraordinary, at times, how free from any blemish of self-consciousness she seemed to be. this was her way: giving herself over [pg 43]entirely to one thing at a time. curiously enough, it even had something to do with what has (carefully weighing values) been called her fundamental honesty; though here, as so often with her, the true spring was not involved. concentration was one of the sturdy precepts expounded by the rev. alfred needham. the influence of this father was very strongly marked in the daughter. but as for leslie, he was keenly conscious, walking beside her through the lovely forest of betsey, of a shift which seemed to him untimely and again humiliating. he grew reserved and cold; walked along in silence. however, his thoughts were busy. and the more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that that phrase of hers: "i don't see what harm there is in making new friends," sounded a warning which he must heed! louise glanced again at her watch to make quite sure she had read the hour aright.
"les," she demanded, wholly consumed now with the apprehension lest she miss her train, "is your watch with mine?"
"i have five minutes to five," he answered coldly, pressing open the case of his old-fashioned heirloom watch and quickly snapping it shut again. he snapped it as quickly as he could because he did not want to let his eyes rest on the picture pasted inside the case.
"do you think we can make it?"
"i've made it in less time, a good deal."
"les," she entreated wanderingly as they emerged[pg 44] from the forest and scudded through the sand to the boathouse where he kept his little launch, "we simply must be friends, whatever happens."
she studied, though abstractedly, the settling look of antipathy on his face. she did not know what it meant, but instinctively she shuddered at it just a little.
"les, dear, you must let me be...."
his curiosity was aroused, and he broke with a heavy bluntness into the groping silence. "what?"
"why, i was just going to say you must let me be"—the inevitable could not be restrained—"be like a sister to you...." and she smiled, even through her troubled abstraction. she laid a hand on his arm. "i know that sounds as though it came out of a book, but it expresses my thought as well as i know how. you know—you see i'm a little older than you—though i never think of that...."
leslie dropped his arm, and her hand slid off. it fell to her side in a limp way. she hardly noticed the fact, though. her mind was swimming with the strange contending forces which seemed, so inexplicably, to compose her life. she seemed all at once not to see anything very clearly....
they entered the boathouse, but leslie had not replied to the generous suggestion, and went with a moody briskness about the task of making the small craft ready for the nine-mile voyage. then he helped her in; arranged a cushion or two. when he touched her there was a mitigated flash of the old[pg 45] thrill. but the thrill seemed subtly palpitating, now, with something else. it was a new and, oddly enough, a not altogether disagreeable sensation. for the first time, though leslie didn't as yet clearly realize this, he was looking at miss needham critically. he had certainly never looked at her this way before. he noticed a tiny dash of powder she hadn't brushed off the collar of her jacket; observed a very faint and unobtrusive hint of the roman in her nose. as for her nose, he merely wondered, as he coaxed the engine into activity, that he hadn't marked the true line of the bridge before....
it took nearly an hour to reach beulah, at the other end of crystal lake. louise, it fortunately developed, would make her train easily. leslie moored the launch, which had behaved surprisingly well, and escorted his passenger through the tiny village to the railroad station. little talk sped between them. he asked at what hour the expected steamer was due. eight o'clock, she told him. he remarked that there would be a good bit of time to consume after she arrived in frankfort, and she replied, in a mildly distracted way, that she didn't mind. but she added, all the same, with a little petitioning, blind burst: "i wish you were going the rest of the way with me!"
"i will if you want me to," he answered listlessly. or was he feigning listlessness by way of retrieving his rather severely damaged pride?
[pg 46]
"oh, no!" she cried, merely voicing the instinctive contradiction which rose most naturally to her lips. the train was heard whistling in the distance. then she remembered something, and spoke with greater assurance than had been displayed on her part since they left the forest of betsey. "you're expected back, you know, to play tennis. you promised." she seemed almost relieved, in a way; yet she could not resist, too, the little muffled dig. and there was also something dark lurking beneath both the relief and the dig.
"i promised?"
"didn't you tell hilda you'd be back in time for the match?"
"oh—yes," he admitted.
"so you see," she laughed, "you had no thought of going on any farther than beulah!"
his just expressed willingness to accompany her the rest of the way had depended directly upon her own sufficiently vehement exclamation: "i wish you were going!" but the way she laughed seemed to imply a kind of duplicity in him which brought a flush to his face. and he reminded her, with glacial tones: "you told me all along i could only take you as far as beulah. you were very positive about it." the kindling distrust did not die out of his eyes.
"yes, i understand, les. it's all right. hilda will be watching for you."
suddenly the train came into view around a bend.[pg 47] louise unconsciously straightened her hat and tugged at her gloves, as though lynndal barry were to be met aboard the cars instead of emerging, ever so much later, from the boat in frankfort.
"good-bye, les," she said warmly.
"good-bye."
"thank you so much for bringing me."
he nodded away the obligation. then the train started, and leslie turned back toward his launch.
a feeling of great and wholly unexpected tenderness came upon louise. she leaned far out of the car window to wave. he looked back, saw her, and waved also; then sauntered coolly on toward the dock.
