Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/322

 the rush of cars on Clarendon Avenue; with surprising distinctness, occasionally, the cries of bathers under the lights to the south and the splash of diving. Some one else on the water was playing.

"Violin," guessed Gregg.

"No," Marjorie whispered, so as to miss none of a marvelously sweet, stirring, plaintive strain. "It's a flute! And I know that and love it!" And both listened till the music ceased.

"That was made for now," Gregg said.

"Yes, it's the Meditation from 'Thaïs'!"

People nearer shore clapped; and the musician played his pipe again.

It took her back, that Meditation, to her Evanston days when, with her father and mother, she went each Tuesday night in winter to hear opera.

The people near shore tried to win another encore but the flute stayed silent and only the dance jazz came; so Marjorie cut the loaf with the knife from the lunch box Sam kept in the canoe; Gregg opened their can of potted ham and she spread the sandwiches. She had stuffed eggs and strawberries, which they ate from the stems, and he had iced ginger ale, which they drank from the bottles through straws. "A regular, old-fashioned picnic," Marjorie called it; and they handed things to each other, cleared up and put away scraps together and then, sometimes paddling, sometimes drifting, they talked or were silent just as they liked; and when either spoke it was with no feeling of necessity to connect what was in one's head now with the last subject.

"What do you know about father now?" she asked at one of these times. It was her first direct question about him.