Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/136

 She was comfortable, Dave believed. Now she lifted a foot and, bending quickly, she loosened a skate and kicked it off; that was sensible, not to tire herself by standing on skates. She cleared her other boot of the second skate while he was stooping to help her. He removed his skates and he stood beside her, gazing at the lights on the shore.

There was the double line of lights, which were the street lamps of Sheridan Road; in many places the line was broken, and uneven patterns of yellow windows showed where houses stood between the boulevard and the shore; along other reaches of the road, the irregular patches of lighted windows glowed beyond the street lamps; and before them bright gleams waved back and forth, as motorcars sped by.

"That's what the ice comes in to see," Fidelia said and her feeling caught him; for the moment, the ice, upon which they stood, became the barque of some elemental God steering shoreward for a while to look at the lights of man and then casting adrift to return to his dwelling in the dark of the stars.

Dave drew closer to her; he wanted to share more of the exuberance of her feelings.

On the shore, far away, a red flame wavered up and broadened and then blew flat and long, beaten down by the wind.

"Bonfire," Fidelia said. "Alice has a bonfire for us."

Dave did not want to think of Alice. He did not know that she had fallen into the water in her attempt to follow him; he did not know that she had tried to go with him. From the instant when he leaped the