"But that isn't all, for when we came along you were looking at the sky."

"Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong to-night----"

"Go on."

"I was thinking of Italy."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"I never can catch Brother Francis, thinking of anything but Italy,"

remarked Kimberly.

"Who can blame him?" exclaimed Imogene.

"Or the hereafter," added Kimberly.

Nelson grunted. "I'm afraid he doesn't find much sympathy here on that subject," he observed, looking from one to another.

"Don't be mistaken, Nelson," said Kimberly, "_I_ think about it, and Francis will tell you so. I have already made tentative arrangements with him on that score. Francis is to play Lazarus to my Dives. When I am in h.e.l.l I am to have my cup of cold water from him. And remember, Francis, if you love me, the conditions. Don't forget the conditions; they are the essence of the contract. I am to have the water one drop at a time. Don't forget that; one drop at a time. Eternity is a long, long while."

Francis, ill at ease, took a pinch of snuff to compose himself.

"Your role doesn't seem altogether to your liking, Francis," suggested Imogene.

"His role! Why, it's paradise itself compared to mine," urged Kimberly.

Brother Francis drew his handkerchief and wiped his nose very simply.

"I pray, Robert," he said, "that you may never be in h.e.l.l."

"But keep me in your eye, Francis. Don't relax your efforts. A sugar man is liable to stumble and fall in while your back is turned."

"We must get started for the lake," announced Imogene. "Brother Francis, we are all going down to see The Towers from the water. Will you come?"

Francis excused himself, and his companions joined the other guests who were gathering at the water. Oarsmen were waiting with barges and fires burned from the pillars of the esplanade. As the boats left the sh.o.r.e, music came across the water. Alice, with Kimberly, caught a glimpse of her husband in a pa.s.sing boat. "Having a good time?" he cried. For answer she waved her hand.

"Are you really having a good time?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, do you care at all for this kind of thing?"

"Of course, I care for it. Who could help it? It is lovely. Where are we going?"

"Down the lake a mile or two; then the boats will return for the fireworks."

"You don't seem very lively yourself to-night. Are you bored?"

"No; only wondering whether you will go driving with me to-morrow."

"I said I would not."

"I hoped, of course, you might reconsider."

He did not again press the subject of the drive, but when they were walking up the hill after the rockets and showers of gold falling down the dark sky, she told him he might come for her the next day. "I don't know how it is," she murmured, "but you always have your own way. You wind me right around your finger."

He laughed. "If I do, it is only because I don't try to."

"I realize it; that is what puzzles me."

"The real secret is, not that I wind you around my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my feelings. I find something to wonder at, too.

When I am with you--even when you are anywhere near me, I am totally different. Alone, I am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself. I am self-absorbed and concentrated. With you I am never wholly within myself. I am, seemingly, partly in your consciousness."

Alice shook her head. "It is true," he persisted. "It is one of the consequences of love; to be drawn out of one's self. I have it." He turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?"

"I think so."

"But do you ever feel it?"

"Sometimes."

"Never, of course, for me?"

"Sometimes."

CHAPTER XXIX

"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."

She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.

Not that Dolly was censorious. Her philosophy found refuge in fatalism.

And since what is to be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were concerned--why worry over the complications? Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to be consulted. The way to be consulted she had long ago learned was to find fault.

But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice, Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a subject of comment. Lottie Nelson, who could never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when occasion offered.

One afternoon at The Hickories, Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked whether Robert was still chasing her.

"Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously and ringing the changes on the objectionable word, "Of course; why shouldn't he chase her? Who else is there to chase? He loves the excitement of the hunt; and who else around here is there to hunt? The other women hunt him. No man wants anything that comes tumbling after him. What we want is what we can't get; or at least what we're not sure of getting."

Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of comment were at least oblivious of it. They motored a great deal, always at their own will, and they accounted to no one for their excursions.

"They are just a pair of bad children," said Imogene to Dolly. "And they act like children."

One of their diversions in their rambling drives was to stop children and talk with them or ask questions of them. One day near Sunbury they encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an invalid chair.