Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/153

 That, to Fidelia, was merely a fact. "I can." She could; and Alice could not. Another fact was: "He wants me." The corollary of that fact was that he had ceased to want Alice.

Fidelia felt these facts. What she was to do about them—or if she was to do anything about them—was a matter for the future which had a way, so Fidelia had learned, of taking care of itself. One did things, in the future, which one could not possibly imagine today. She thought of what she herself had done.

In a way, she had come here to clear herself of that. "Character," she said to herself. "That's what I want this time."

Dave Herrick walked beside her. He did not clasp her; he did not touch her, unnecessarily; nor did he contrive the excuses for close contact with her which another man—which any other man in Fidelia's experience—would have arranged. He did not know that his constraint upon himself—his being there and yet keeping himself from her—stirred her far more than could any common clasp.

She sang:

"Oh what so rare, dear, As a day of sunshine; The sky is dear at last The rain and storm are past."

The English verse of the warm "Sole Mio." He sang: he had learned that night not merely the verse but how to sing—sing! He had learned it from her there on the floe in the dark and cold.

Like the warm sun, her "Sole Mio," Fidelia kept