"Her plan?" Warren said clearing his throat.

"Our plan!" Magsie amended contentedly. And she summarized the case briskly: "Rachael consents to a divorce, we know that. I am not going on with Bowman, I've decided that. Now what?" She eyed his brooding face curiously. "What shall I do, Greg? I suppose we oughtn't to see each other as we did last summer? If Rachael goes West--and I suppose she will--shall I go up to the Villalongas'?

They're terribly nice to me; and I think Vera suspects---"

"What makes you think she does?" Warren asked, feeling as if a hot, dry wind suddenly smote his skin.

"Because she's so nice to me!" Magsie answered triumphantly.

"Rachael's been just a little snippy to Vera," she confided further, "or Vera thinks she has. She's not been up there for ages! I could tell Vera---"

Warren's power of reasoning was dissipated in an absolute panic.

But George had primed him for this talk. He a.s.sumed an air of business.

"There are several things to think of, Magsie," he said briskly, "before we can go farther. In the first place, you must spend the summer comfortably. I've arranged for that--"

He handed her a small yellow bank-book. Magsie glanced at it; glanced at him.

"Oh, Greg, dear, you're too generous!"

"I'm not generous at all," he answered with an honest flush. "I know what I am now, Magsie, I'm a cad."

"Who says you're a cad?" Magsie demanded indignantly.

"I say so!" he answered. "Any man is a cad who gets two women into a mess like this!"

"Greg, dear, you shan't say so!" Her slender arms were about his neck.

"Well--" He disengaged the arms, and went on with his planning.

"George Valentine is going to see Rachael," he proceeded.

"About the divorce?" said Magsie with a nod.

"About the whole thing. And George thinks I had better go away."

"Where?" demanded Magsie.

"Oh, travelling somewhere."

"Rio?" dimpled Magsie. "You know you have always had a sneaking desire to see Rio."

Warren smiled mechanically. It had been Rachael's favorite dream "when the boys are big enough!" His sons--were they bathing this minute, or eagerly emptying their blue porridge bowls?

"Magsie, dear," he said slowly, "it's a miserable business--this.

I'm as sorry as I can be about it. But the truth is that George wants me to get away only until he and Alice can get Rachael into a mood where she'll forgive me. They see this whole crazy thing as it really is, dear. I'm not a young man, Magsie, I'm nearly fifty.

I have no business to think of anything but my own wife and my work and my children--Don't look so, Magsie," he broke off to say; "I only blame myself! I have loved you--I do love you--but it's only a man's love for a sweet little amusing friend. Can't we-- can't we stop it right here? You do what you please; draw on me for twice that, for ten times that; have a long, restful summer, and then come back in the fall as if this was all a dream---"

Magsie had been watching him steadily during this speech, a long speech for him. At first she had been obviously puzzled, then astonished, now she was angry. She had grown pale, her pretty childish mouth was a little open, her breath coming fast. For a full minute, as his voice halted, there was silence.

"Then--then you didn't mean all you said?" Magsie demanded stormily, after the pause. "You didn't mean that you--cared? You didn't mean the letters, and the presents, and the talks we've had? You knew I was in earnest, but you were just fooling!" Sheer excitement and fury kept her panting for a moment, then she went on: "But I think I know who's done this, Greg!" she said viciously; "it's Mrs. Valentine. She and her husband have been talking to you; they've done it. She's persuaded you that you never were in earnest with me!" Magsie ran across the room, flung open the little desk that stood there, and tore the rubber band from a package of letters. "You take her one of these!" she said, half sobbing. "Ask her if that means anything! Greg, dear!" she interrupted herself to say in a child's reproachful tone, "didn't you mean it?" And with her soft hair floating, and her figure youthful under the simple lines of her Oriental robe, she came to stand close beside him, her mood suddenly changed. "Don't you love me any more, Greg?" said she.

"Love you!" he countered with a rueful laugh, "that's the trouble."

She linked her soft little hands in his, raised reproachful eyes.

"But you don't love me enough to stand by me, now that Rachael is so cross?" she asked artlessly. "Oh, Greg, I will wait years and years for you!"

Warren's expression was of wretchedness; he managed a smile.

"It's only that I hate to let you in for it all, dear. And let her in for it. I feel as if we hadn't thought it out--quite enough,"

he said.

"What does it let Rachael in for?" she asked quickly. "Here's her letter, Greg--I'll read it to you! Rachael doesn't mind."

"Well--it will be horrible for you," he submitted in a troubled tone. "Horrible for us both."

"You mean your work can't spare you?" she asked with a shrewd look.

"No!" He shrugged wearily. "No. The truth is, I want to get away,"

he said in an undertone.

"Ah, well!" Magsie understood that. "Of course you want to get away from the fuss and the talk, Greg," she said eagerly. "I think we all ought to get away: Rachael to Long Island, I to Vera, you anywhere! We can't possibly be married for months---" Suddenly her voice sank, she dropped his hands, and locked her smooth little arms about his neck. "But I'll be waiting for you, and you for me, Greg," she whispered. "Isn't it all settled now, isn't it only a question of all the bother, lawyers and arrangements, before you and I belong to each other as we've always dreamed we might?"

He looked down gravely, almost sadly, and yet with tenderness, upon the eager face. He had always found her lovable, endearing, and sweet; even out of this hideous smoke and flame she emerged all charming and all desirable. He tightened his arms about the thinly wrapped little figure.

"Yes. I think it's all settled now, Magsie!" he said.

"Well, then!" She sealed it with one of her quick little kisses.

"Now sit down and read a magazine, Greg," she said happily, "and in ten minutes you'll see me in my new hat, all ready to go to lunch!"

CHAPTER IV

The blue tides rose and fell at Clark's Hills, the summer sun shone healingly down upon Rachael's sick heart and soul. Day after day she took her bare-headed, sandalled boys to the white beach, and lay in the warm sands, with the tonic Atlantic breezes blowing over her. s.p.a.ce and warmth and silence were all about; the incoming breakers moved steadily in, and shrank back in a tumble of foam and blue water; gulls dipped and wheeled in the spray. As far as her dreaming eyes could reach, up the beach and down, there was the same bath of warm color, blue sea melting into blue sky, white sand mingling with yellow dunes, until all colors, in the distance, swam in a haze of dull gold.

Now and then, when even the sh.o.r.e was hot, the boys elected to spend their afternoon by the bay on the other side of the village.

Here there was much small traffic in dingies and dories and lobster-pots; the slower tides rocked the little craft at the moorings, and sent bright swinging light against the weather-worn planks under the pier. Rachael smiled when she saw Derry's little dark head confidently resting against the flowing, milky beard of old Cap'n Jessup, or heard the bronzed lean younger men shout to her older son, as to an equal, "Pitch us that painter, will ye, Jim!"

She spoke infrequently but quietly of Warren to Alice. The older woman discovered, with a pang of dismay, that Rachael's att.i.tude was fixed beyond appeal. There was such a thing as divorce, established and approved; she, Rachael, had availed herself of its advantages; now it was Warren's turn.

Rachael would live for her sons. They must of course be her own.

She would take them away to some other atmosphere: "England, I think," she told Alice. "That's my mother country, you know, and children lead a sane, balanced life there."

"I will be everything to them until they are--say, ten and twelve," she added on another day, "and then they will begin to turn toward their father. Of course I can't blame him to them, Alice. And some day they will come to believe that it is all their mother's fault--that's the way with children! And so I'll pay again."

"Dearest girl, you're morbid!" Alice said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"No, I mean it, I truly mean that! It is disillusioning for young boys to learn that their father and mother were not self- controlled, normal persons, able to bear the little p.r.i.c.ks of life, but that our history has been public gossip for years, that two separate divorces are in their immediate history!"