"Yes--I was hashing over in my mind to give you as something original only the things I'd already heard--"
"That is my objection to philosophy--it is a hash of words," I said.
"Still, one does have to have an experimental creed to go on with--one to change and add to, but to keep one steadfast meanwhile."
"Yes," I said. "Mine is foolishly practical: be decent, play fair, and take the life of no living creature."
"You are inconsistent right at the start," she complained. "If you lived up to your creed you'd be a vegetarian."
"I admit the weakness in the armour, but I mean shooting and killing beasts and birds for the fun of it. Mosquitoes are excepted.
"You keep your creed pretty firmly on earth."
"That's where I live at present, Grey Eyes."
"Ted, dear, I don't think you have improved upon the Sermon on the Mount, not even for practical purposes."
"I think, Helen, you've rather shown me up," I acknowledged. Her hand quickly sought my arm.
"No, Ted dear. I wasn't trying to outargue you; I wanted to know what you really thought about things."
"I improvised my creed on the spur of the moment. Probably there is more to it."
She got to her feet with her precious radiant laugh: "We must go back to the Inn, Ted. Miss Hershey will be fuming because the party can't start for home without us."
It was strange how naturally and unconsciously we had grown in intimacy and friendship during the day, leaping over what I had always imagined would take months of time. Yet I am quite certain, as I look backward now over the entries in my diary, that no serious thoughts of love had yet entered our heads. We were building away at a friendship, uncertain as to how elaborate the superstructure was to be, or, to be more precise, not questioning the future at all. To change the figure, we were quite content to explore one another's souls and to marvel at the mystic things we found there. Neither of us had quite reached complete frankness, but we were very near. I fell asleep that night with the realization that Deep Harbor had suddenly become an intimate place in which I lived.
October turned into November and angry hints of oncoming winter almost daily shrilled across the lake, scattering the heaps of yellow leaves on Myrtle Boulevard or playing the dickens with signs and hats on State Street. The nights were raw and cold; the night-shift at the factory ate their midnight lunches in the boiler room, a place which in July had seemed one of the lowest circles of the Inferno. Business was at a most critical stage, and Knowlton drove away at it day and night. We were, as he expressed it, just at the turn of the tide; it was a toss-up whether we should be swept on to the rocks or out into the sea of reasonable prosperity. I saw comparatively little of him, for he had not yet released me from night duty. I was getting quite accustomed to this nocturnal existence; I had actually grown to like it, because it left my afternoons free to go riding with Helen. I went to bed about half past seven in the morning, got up around three, and three-thirty would find Helen and me trotting sedately up Myrtle Boulevard--a sight to which the latter had become so hardened that not a verandah fluttered as we passed by. Indeed, the cool weather had driven even the most hardened gossip-scouts within. Helen's girl friends had tacitly accepted the situation, and at dinners or card parties Helen and I were always paired off together by tactful hostesses. None of the first riding party went with us now. Miss Hershey was chaperoning at White Sulphur, although there were rumours she would return for Christmas. "Mother" was querulous and fretful, particularly when we rode on stormy days; otherwise she had practically ceased active opposition. Her attitude now was resigned, if hurt, patience, varied with occasional Cassandra-like utterances of dire foreboding.