They tightened about it like silk threads--a snaky web--and for one scared instant he had a sense of being smothered in dusty feathers, whispering together and saying, "When you're a little older and a great deal wiser. When you've come to my age and know that all girls are the same. When you realize that long engagements seldom mean marriage.

When--"

He put the cobwebs aside with a strain of will, for he was very tired in body, and settled himself to write to Nancy. It was not the cobwebs that hurt. The only thing that mattered was that she had been hurt on his account--was being hurt now on his account--would be hurt, and still and always on his account, not because he wanted to hurt her but because it was not within his power, but Life's, to hurt her in that respect or not.

"Oh, felicitous Nancy!" the pen began to scratch. "Your letter--"

Stupid to be so tired when he was writing to Nancy. Stupid not to find the right things to say at once when you wanted to say them so much. He dropped the pen an instant, sat back, and tried to evoke Nancy before him like a small, clear picture seen in a lens, tried to form with his will the lifeless air in front of him till it began to take on some semblance and body of her that would be better than the tired remembrances of the mind.

Often, and especially when he had thought about her intensely for a long time, the picture would not come at all or come with tantalizing incompleteness, apparently because he wanted it to be whole so much--all he could see would be a wraith of Nancy, wooden as a formal photograph, with none of her silences or mockeries about her till he felt like a painter who has somehow let the devil into his paintbox so that each stroke he makes goes a little fatally out of true from the vision in his mind till the canvas is only a crazy-quilt of reds and yellows. Now, perhaps, though, she might come, even though he was tired. He pressed the back of a hand against his eyes. She was coming to him now. He remembered one of their walks together--a walk they had taken some eight months ago, when they had been only three days engaged. Up Fifth Avenue; Forty-second Street, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, the crosstown glitter of lights, the reflected glow of Broadway, spraying the sky with dim gold-dust, begins to die a little behind them. Past pompous expensive windows full of the things that Oliver and Nancy will buy when Oliver's novel has gone into its first fifty thousand, content with the mere touch of each other's hands, they are so sure of each other now. Past people, dozens of people, getting fewer and fewer as Forty-sixth Street comes, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, always a little arrogantly because none of the automatic figures they pa.s.s have ever eaten friendly bread together or had fire that can burn over them like clear salt water or the knowledge that the only thing worth having in life is the hurt and gladness of that fire. Buses pa.s.s like big squares of honeycomb on wheels, crowded with pale, tired bees--the stars march slowly from the western slope to their light viewless pinnacle in the center of the heavens, walking brightly like strong men in silvered armor--the stars and the buses, the buses and the stars, either and both of as little and much account--it would not really surprise either Oliver or Nancy if the next green bus that pa.s.ses should start climbing into the sky like a clumsy bird.

The first intoxication is still upon them--they have told n.o.body except anyone who ever sees them together--they walk tactfully and never too close, both having a horror of publicly amatory couples, but like the king's daughter--or was it Solomon's Temple?--they are all glorious within. Fifty-fifth, Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh--the square in front of the Plaza--that tall chopped bulky tower lit from within like a model in a toyshop window--motors purring up to its door like thin dark cats, motors purring away. The fountain with the little statue--the pool a cool dark stone cracked with the gold of the lights upon it, and near the trees of the Park, half-hidden, gold Sherman, riding, riding, Victory striding ahead of him with a golden palm.

Ahead of them too goes Victory, over fear, over doubt, over littleness, her gold shoes ring like the noise of a sparkling sword, her steps are swift. They stand for an instant, hands locked, looking back at the long roller-coaster swoop of the Avenue, listening to the roll of tired wheels, the faint horns, the loud horns. They know each other now--their hands grip tighter--in the wandering instant the whole background of streets and tall buildings pa.s.ses like breath from a mirror--for the instant without breath or clamor, they exist together, one being, and the being has neither flesh to use the senses too clumsily, nor human thoughts to rust at the will, but lives with the strength of a thunder and the heedlessness of a wave in a wide and bright eternity of the unspoken.

"All the same," says Nancy, when the moment pa.s.ses, lifting a shoe with the concern of a kitten that has just discovered a thorn in its paw, "New York pavements are certainly _hard_ on loving feet."

VII

So the picture came. And other pictures like it. And since the living that had made them was past for a little they were both fainter and in a measure brighter with more elfin colors than even that living had been which had made them glow at first. White memory had taken them into her long house of silence where everything is cool with the silver of Spring rain on leaves, she had washed from them the human pettiness, the human separateness, the human insufficiency to express the best that must come in any mortal relationship that lasts longer than the hour. They were not better in memory than they had been when lived, for the best remembrance makes only brilliant ghosts, but they were in their dim measure nearer the soul's perfection, for the tricks of the sounding board of the mind and the f.e.c.kless instrument of the body had been put away. "We've had infinites already--infinites," thought Oliver, and didn't care about the ludicrous ineptness of the words. He smiled, turning back to the unwritten letter. If they hadn't had infinites already--he supposed they wouldn't want more so badly right now. He smiled, but this time without humor. It had all seemed so easy at first.

Nancy had been in Paris at fourteen before "business reverses" of the kind that mild, capable-looking men like Mr. Ellicott seem to attract, as a gingerbread man draws wasps, when they are about fifty, had reduced him to a position as chief bookkeeper and taken Nancy out of her first year in Farmington. Oliver had spent nine months on a graduate scholarship in Paris and Provence in 1919. Both had friends there and argued long playful hours planning just what sort of a magnificently cheap apartment on the _Rive Gauche_ they would have when they went back.

For they were going back--they had been brilliantly sure of it--Oliver had only to finish his novel that was so much better already than any novel Nancy had ever read--sell a number of copies of it that seemed absurdly small in proportion to the population of America--and then they could live where they pleased and Oliver could compose Great Works and Nancy get ahead with her very real and delicate talent for etching instead of having to do fashion-drawings of slinky simperers in Lucile dresses or appet.i.te-arousing paintings of great cans of tomato soup.

But that had been eight months ago. Vanamee and Company's--the neat vice-president talking to Oliver--"a young hustler has every chance in the world of getting ahead here, Mr. Crowe. You speak French? Well, we have been thinking for some time of establishing branch-offices in Europe." The chance of a stop-gap job in St. Louis for Nancy, where she could be with her family for a while--she really ought to be with them a couple of months at least, if she and Oliver were to be married so soon.

The hopeful parting in the Grand Central--"But, Nancy, you're sure you wouldn't mind going across second-cla.s.s?"

"Why Ollie, dear, how silly! Why, what would it matter?" "All right, then, and remember, I'll wire _just_ as soon as things really start to break--"

And then for eight months, nothing at all but letters and letters, except two times, once in New York, once in St. Louis, when both had spent painful savings because they simply had to see each other again, since even the best letters were only doll-house food you could look at and wish you could eat--and both had tried so hard to make each disappearing minute perfect before they had to catch trains again that the effort left them tired as jugglers who have been balancing too many plates and edgy at each other for no cause in the world except the unfairness that they could only have each other now for so short a time.

And the people, the vast unescapable horde of the dull-but-nice or the merely dull who saw in their meetings nothing either particularly spectacular or pitiful or worth applause.

And always after the parting, a little crippled doubt tapping its crutches along the alleys of either mind. "Do I _really?_ Because if I do, how can I be so tired sometimes with her, with him? And why can't I say more and do more and be more when he, when she? And everybody says.

And they're older than we are--mightn't it be true? And--" And then, remorsefully, the next day, all doubt burnt out by the clear hurt of absence. "Oh how could I! When it is real--when it is like that--when it is the only thing worth while in the world!"

But absence and meetings of this sort told on them inescapably, and both being, unfortunately, of a rather high-strung intelligence and youth, recognized it, no matter how much consciousness might deny it, and wondered sometimes, rather pitiably, why they couldn't be always at one temperature, like lovers in poetry, and why either should ever worry or hurt the other when they loved. Any middle-aged person could and did tell them that they were now really learning something about love--omitting the small fact that Pain, though he comes with the highest literary recommendations is really not the wisest teacher of all in such matters--all of which helped the constant nervous and psychological strain on both as little as a Latin exorcism would help a fever. For the very reason that they wished to be true in their love, they said things in their letters that a spoken word or a gesture would have explained in an instant but that no printed alphabet could; and so they often hurt each other while meaning and trying to help all they could.

Not quite as easy as it had seemed at first--oh, not on your life not, thought Oliver, rousing out of a gloomy muse. And then there was the writing he wanted to do--and Nancy's etching--"our d.a.m.n careers" they had called them--but those _were_ the things they did best--and neither had had even tolerable working conditions recently--

Well, sufficient to the day was the evil thereof--that was one of those safe Bible-texts you seemed to find more and more use for the older you grew. Bible-texts. It was lucky tomorrow was Sunday when slaves of the alarm-clock had peace. Oliver straightened his shoulders unconsciously and turned back to the blank paper. He did love Nancy. He did love Nancy. That was all that counted.

"Oh, felicitous Nancy!

Your letter was--"

VIII

The water was a broken gla.s.s of blue, sunstruck waves--there were few swimmers in it where the two friends went in next morning, for the beach proper with its bath-houses and float was nearly a quarter of a mile down. Oliver could see Margaret's red cap bobbing twenty yards out as he tried the water cautiously with curling toes, and, much farther out, a blue cap and the flash of an arm going suddenly under. Mrs. Severance, the friend Louise had brought out for the week-end, he supposed; she swam remarkably for a woman. He swam well enough himself and couldn't give her two yards in the hundred. Ted stood beside him, both tingling a little at the fresh of the salt air. "Wow!" and they plunged.

A mock race followed for twenty yards--then Oliver curved off to duck Margaret, already screaming and paddling at his approach, while Ted kept on.

He swam face deep, catching short breaths under the crook of his arm, burying himself in the live blue running sparkle, every muscle stretched as if he were trying to rub all the staleness that can come to the mind and the restless p.r.i.c.klings that will always worry the body clean from him, like a snake's cast skin, against the wet rough hands of the water.

There--it was working--the flesh was compact and separate no longer--he felt it dissolve into the salt push of spray--become one with that long blue body of wave that stretched fluently radiant for miles and miles till it too was no more ident.i.ty but only sea, receiving the sun, without thought, without limbs, without pain. He sprinted with the last breath he had in him to annihilation in that light l.u.s.trous firmament.

Then his flung-out hand struck something firm and smooth. With the momentary twinge of a jarred toe, he stopped in the middle of a stroke, grabbed at the firm thing unthinkingly, felt it slip away from him, trod water and came up gasping.

"Oh, I'm _horribly_ sorry!" Gurgle and choke at water gone the wrong way. "Honestly--what a dumb-bell trick! but I didn't see you at _all_ and with the whole Sound to swim in I thought I was safe--"

He rubbed the water out of his eyes. A woman in a blue cap. Pretty, too--not one of the pretty kind that look like drenched paper-dolls in swimming.

"Don't apologize--it's all my fault, really. I should have heard you coming, I suppose, but I was floating and my ears were under water--and this cap! You did scare me a little, though; I didn't know there was anyone else in miles--"

She smiled frankly. Ted got another look at her and decided that pretty was hardly right. Beautiful, perhaps, but you couldn't tell with her hair that way under her cap.

"You're Mr. Billett, aren't you? Louise said last night that her brother was bringing a friend over Sunday. She also said that she'd introduce us--but we seem to have done that."

"Rather. Introduction by drowning. The latest cleverness in Newport circles--see 'Mode.' And you're Mrs. Severance."

"Yes. Nice water."

"Perfect."

A third look--a fairly long one--left Ted still puzzled. Age--thirty?

thirty-five? Swims perfectly. On "Mode." Wide eyes, sea-blue, sea-changing. An odd nose that succeeded in being beautiful in spite of itself. A rather full small mouth, not loose with sense nor rigid with things controlled, but a mouth that would suck like a bee at the last and tiniest drop of any physical sweet which the chin and the eyes had once decided to want. The eyes measure, the mouth asks, the cleft chin finds the way. A face neither content, nor easily to be contented--in repose it is neither happy nor unhappy but only matured. Louise's friend--that was funny--Louise had such an ideal simplicity of mind.

Well--

"If you float--after a while you don't know quite where you're floating," said Mrs. Severance's voice detachedly.

Ted made no answer but turned over, spreading out his arms. For a few moments they lay like corpses on the blue swelling round of the water looking straight through infinite distance into the thin faint vapor of the sky.

"Yes, I see what you mean."

"We might be clouds, almost, mightn't we?" with a slow following note of laughter.

Ted looked deeper into the sky, half-closing his eyelids. It seemed to take his body from him completely, to leave him nothing but a naked soothed consciousness, rising and falling, a petal on a swinging bough, in the heart of blue quietude like the quiet of an open place in a forest empty with evening.

"Clouds," said Mrs. Severance's voice, turning the word to a sound breathed lightly through the curled and husky gold of a forest-horn.

Through the midst of his sea-drowsiness a queer thought came to Ted. This had happened before, in sleep perhaps, in a book he had read--Oliver's novel, possibly, he thought and smiled. Lying alone on a roof of blue water, and yet not lying alone, for there was that slow warm voice that talked from time to time and came into the mind on tiptoe like the creeping of soft-shoed, hasteless, fire. You stretched your hands to the fire and let it warm you and soon your whole body was warm and pleased and alive. That was when you were alive past measure, when all of you had been made warm as a cat fed after being hungry, and the cat arose from its warmth and went walking on velvet paws, stretching sleek legs, sleek body, slowly and exquisitely under the firelight, heavy with warmth, but ready at the instant signal of the small burning thing in its mind to turn like a black b.u.t.terfly and dance a slow seeking dance with the shadows of the fire that flickered like leaves in light wind, desirable, impalpable and wavering, never to be quite torn down from the wall and eaten and so possessed. But there was an odd thirsty satisfaction in trying to tear the shadows.

Fantastic. He had not been so fantastic for a long time.

"And tomorrow there's 'Mode.' And fashion-plates. _And_ Greenwich Villagers," said the voice of Mrs. Severance. He made some reply impatiently, disliking the sound of his own voice--hers fitted with the dream. When had he been this before?

The Morte d'Arthur--the two with a sword between.