When the few minutes were over she rose to her feet.
“Now we must get back to the pavilion, I suppose,” she said. “My, but we are sights, though! Do let's see if we can't make ourselves a little more presentable.”
She did her best to wipe off the thickest of the clay smears with her handkerchief, but the experiment was rather a failure. As they started to walk back along the beach she suddenly turned to him and said:
“I haven't told you how--how much obliged I am for--for what you did. If you hadn't come, I don't know what would have happened to me.”
“Oh, that's all right,” he answered lightly. He was reveling in the dramatic qualities of the situation. She did not speak again for some time and he, too, walked on in silence enjoying his day dream. Suddenly he became aware that she was looking at him steadily and with an odd expression on her face.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why do you look at me that way?”
Her answer was, as usual, direct and frank.
“I was thinking about you,” she said. “I was thinking that I must have been mistaken, partly mistaken, at least.”
“Yes; I had made up my mind that you were--well, one sort of fellow, and now I see that you are an entirely different sort. That is, you've shown that you can be different.”
“Why, I mean--I mean--Oh, I'm sure I had better not say it. You won't like it, and will think I had better mind my own affairs--which I should do, of course.”
She looked at him again, evidently deliberating whether or not to speak her thought. Then she said:
“Well, I will say it. Not that it is really my business, but because in a way it is begging your pardon, and I ought to do that. You see, I had begun to believe that you were--that you were--well, that you were not very--very active, you know.”
“Oh, I don't wonder you don't understand. I mean that you were rather--rather fond of not doing much--of--of--”
“Eh? Not doing much? That I was lazy, do you mean?”
“Why, not exactly lazy, perhaps, but--but--Oh, how CAN I say just what I mean! I mean that you were always saying that you didn't like the work in your grandfather's office.”
“And that some day you were going to do something else.”
“But you don't, you know. You don't do anything. You've been talking that way ever since I knew you, calling this a one-horse town and saying how you hated it, and that you weren't going to waste your life here, and all that, but you keep staying here and doing just the same things. The last long talk we had together you told me you knew you could write poems and plays and all sorts of things, you just felt that you could. You were going to begin right away. You said that some months ago, and you haven't done any writing at all. Now, have you?”