Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/130

Rh Bell and Letty had good times together, which Floyd had shared, but he thought of them now compassionately,—"What a pity everybody can't be happy like these people!"

In the afternoon he and Lydia walked along familiar streets; in the grounds about the houses the maples were turning yellow, and the early autumn flowers were in bloom. But Floyd did not notice much along the way. He was absorbed in his consciousness of Lydia—delighting in the fact that she seemed to be revealing herself to him with the freedom of intimacy, delighting, too, in the personality that she revealed. When his eyes were not fixed on her, laughing and admiring, they were directed at the ground, while he mused pleasantly over the always fresh knowledge that they had acquired.

"I hope," she said doubtfully, "you did n't think I was very flippant, speaking of Stewart as I did at luncheon, and laughing a little about his Bostonian ideas?"

"No; of course it's perfectly true," Floyd answered.

"It's just the way I talk to Stewart himself; I feel I can talk about him to you almost as I could to him," she explained. "The—the relations are so—so queer, you know; I must always associate you with him so closely as long as I live.—But you two are very unlike, are n't you? I wish"—she spoke a little timidly—"I wish you would n't always be so heroic, Floyd."

The remark stung him even while he did not understand it.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Just what we were speaking of at luncheon," she answered. "I'm sure you're not doing what you want to do. You're being heroic, day after day, up there at New Rome. Why is n't it better to have a good time working, the way Stewart will do, than—oh, you don't mind my talking to you this way, Floyd?"

"But what makes you think I don't have a good time?" he asked her, and there was something of a challenge in his voice.