Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/298

 'Haven't you paddled about in that cold water long enough? Come and sit beside me on this dune.' And he unfurled the big, plum-colored umbrella that had so far theoretically protected the lady's complexion.

She wore an odd green dress of glazed chintz speckled over with minute yellow blossoms. Barefooted and bareheaded she climbed the sand and spread her full skirts beside her husband.

'Are you happy, too? Your beard has grown so shaggy it is almost impossible to see what you are really thinking. Isn't this much nicer than a trip to Niagara?'

'We can come here again next summer if you like, or perhaps go over to Paris.'

'Next year, and the next year, and the year after that and the year after that! Can you imagine that this is going on forever?'

'This sense of security, completeness, this finality is, I think, marriage. You never felt so at peace with the world before, did you?'

'No,' she answered, and felt a slight, unaccountable dread for the peace she had gained and unreasonable regret for the sometimes unhappy freedom she had lost. 'I will have a great many children,' she thought, 'and move in the best intellectual circles in Concord, Cambridge, and Boston. I will study Italian and aid Sears with his translation of Dante, and hire some one to darn my stockings and go over and help those poor poverty-stricken Alcotts.'