I

“I don’t know why you want to go,” said Jane’s mother, “anyway.”

“Just to the Thomas concert,” said Isabel.

“And down in the street cars,” said Jane’s mother, “in your pretty frock.”

“Well⁠—I do,” said Jane.

It was a party of Agnes’s that was under discussion. Agnes had asked her, yesterday in school, to come up to dinner that evening and go down to the Auditorium later to the Thomas concert. Agnes’s mother was going to work that night. She couldn’t use her seat. Agnes’s father would take them. Jane’s mother and Isabel had argued about it all last evening and now they were beginning all over again at the breakfast table.

“Oh, let her go,” said Jane’s father. “It can’t hurt her.”

Jane smiled at him gratefully. Mrs. Ward sighed and poured herself a second cup of coffee.

“You don’t make it any easier, John,” she said, “to control the children.”

“Papa, can I go?” asked Jane, appealing directly to the higher court, a little impertinently.

“Of course she can go, can’t she, Lizzie?” said her father, smiling disarmingly o’er the morning Tribune.

“Oh⁠—I suppose so,” said Mrs. Ward, with a resigned shrug. “We won’t have much more of it. Agnes goes to Bryn Mawr in the fall.”

Jane’s eyes met her father’s with a little gleam of understanding. But there was no use in opening the college issue, just then. It was late April, and Jane was almost ready for her final examinations. She was going to take them, anyway. Miss Milgrim insisted on that. She rose from the table to telephone to Agnes.

“I’m coming up early,” she said, “and I’m going to bring my Virgil. We can read over that passage.” Jane loved Latin, but she wasn’t nearly as good at it as Agnes. She wasn’t nearly as good as Agnes at anything. Agnes was terribly bright. Agnes was going abroad that summer, to tutor a little girl. She was going to England and Germany and Switzerland. Both she and Jane were awfully excited about it. Agnes was eighteen.

Jane left the house quite early with her Virgil. She walked up the Drive and west through the Park to Center Street. It was a beautiful, breezy day, with a wind off the lake. The elm trees were in tiny feathery leaf. The yellow forsythia was in bloom. The heart-shaped leaves of the lilacs were very soft and small. They hadn’t begun to bud yet. Jane left the Park and crossed the Clark Street car-tracks and wondered, as she did so, why they formed such a social Rubicon. Her mother and Isabel never had any opinion of anyone who lived west of Clark Street. It was the worst thing they had to say of Agnes.

Agnes lived in a little brown wooden house in a street of other little brown and grey wooden houses. Some of them had quite large yards and here and there was a newly planted garden. The street was lined with cottonwood trees. Their flickering leaves looked very bright and sticky in the April sunshine. The wooden sidewalk was covered, here and there, with a dust of cottonwood seed. Agnes’s street was very like the country.

Agnes’s house had a little front porch and Agnes was sitting on it in an old maple rocking chair. Agnes was reading a French book. Jane knew what it was, Extracts Selected and Edited from Voltaire’s Prose, by Cohn and Woodward.

Agnes was reading it quite easily, without a dictionary. Agnes was going to take some advanced standing examinations in French in the fall. She closed the book with a bang as Jane came up the front steps. Jane sat down on the top one.

“This is lovely,” said Jane. “Like summer.” It really was. The sun fell hot and bright on the wooden steps. Agnes’s father had put out some crocuses along the little path that led to the gate. Some little boys were playing baseball in the empty lot across the street. Agnes’s next-door neighbor was hanging out the wash⁠—great wet flapping sheets that waved like banners in the spring breeze. Behind her a row of children’s dresses, pink and green and yellow and blue and four pair of men’s white underdrawers danced a fantastic ballet on a second clothesline.

“I like your street, Agnes,” said Jane.

Then they buckled down to the Aeneid. They were reading the end of Book IV. The part about Dido’s funeral pyre. Agnes could read it so well that it almost made Jane cry, at the end.

“Vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi,
Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.”

Agnes crooned the sonorous lines, then translated slowly.

“I have lived and accomplished the task that destiny gave me and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.”

“That’s beautiful,” said Jane. “Nice and proud. That’s the way you ought to feel if you were dying. Not snivelling, you know, or frightened, or crying over spilled milk.”

“It didn’t do her much good,” said Agnes, turning over a page or two. “The next book begins ‘In the meantime, Aeneas unwaveringly pursued his way across the waters.’ He didn’t turn back, you know, though he saw the light from the flames.”

“I don’t care,” said Jane stoutly, “what Aeneas did. He was a poor thing anyway. But Dido died like a lady. A gallant lady. I hope I’ll never cry over spilled milk, Agnes.”

“I don’t believe you will,” said Agnes. Her funny freckled face was bent very admiringly on Jane. “You’re as gallant as anyone I know. Always running uphill. I bet I see you in Bryn Mawr in October. I bet you get there.”

Jane was suddenly electrified to see André turn the corner and come walking up the street. He waved his cap to the two girls.

“Agnes!” said Jane. “Did you ask André?”

“This afternoon,” said Agnes. “Dad telephoned that he couldn’t go with us. He was kept at the newspaper.”

“But who is going with us?” asked Jane.

“André,” said Agnes.

“Just you⁠—and me⁠—and André?” asked Jane again.

“Yes,” said Agnes. “And we have to cook our own dinner first. Mother’s down at the office.”

André turned in at the gate. Agnes sprang up to meet him. Jane sat very soberly on the top step, pricking a brown paint blister with her finger nail, her eyes on the worn porch floor. Her mother wouldn’t like this, thought Jane. Her going with André and Agnes, alone, to the Thomas concert. Jane didn’t like it, herself. Jane knew perfectly well she ought to have some older person with her when she went out in the evening. She felt very much troubled.

“Hello, Jane,” said André. “Can’t you smile?”

Jane tried to.

“Can you scramble eggs, André?” asked Agnes.

“Just watch me!” said André. “If you’ve got some ham I can make eggs Benedictine.”

“If we haven’t,” said Agnes, “we can get it at the grocery.”

They all went into the house. Agnes’s house always looked just a little mussy. Not mussy like the Lesters’, because people lived all over it, but mussy in quite another way, as if nobody lived in it quite enough. The living-room was often dusty and the chairs and sofas weren’t pushed around quite right. They looked as if the people they belonged to never had time to sit down on them. The dining-room had a funny unused look. The fernery needed water and the dishes were piled a little askew in the golden-oak built-in sideboard. André and Agnes and Jane were going to eat in the kitchen. The kitchen was the nicest room in the house.

It was quite large and the stove was always beautifully polished. There were two rocking-chairs in it, near the window that looked over the yard. The curtains were made of blue and white gingham and a blue-and-white tablecloth covered the kitchen table. Mrs. Johnson’s mending basket stood on one corner. Agnes pitched it off onto one of the rocking chairs.

“Set the table, Jane,” said Agnes. She was peering into the icebox. “André,” she said solemnly, “there is ham.”

André tied a dishcloth around his waist and began to call for eggs and butter and lemon. He was going to make Hollandaise sauce. He picked up an eggbeater and poured his ingredients into a big yellow bowl. Jane was devoutly thankful that Flora and Muriel couldn’t see him. Agnes was taking the vegetable salad out of the icebox. André had views on salad dressing. Jane set the table very neatly and arranged the snow pudding on a plate. She went out on the back porch and picked six tiny leaves of Virginia creeper to trim the eggs Benedictine. There wasn’t any parsley. André was mixing the salad dressing when she came in again. Agnes had put the coffee on the stove. Jane couldn’t cook, at all. Agnes could do everything and André was certainly displaying latent talents that she had never suspected.

“This is like Paris,” he said to her with a grin. She had so often asked him if things were. But she would never have thought of putting that question in regard to the Johnsons’ kitchen. “This is just like the studio, except that there’s running water and a better stove.”

They all sat down together. The blue-and-white tablecloth looked very gay. The vegetable salad was used as a centre piece, a heaping pyramid of red beets and green beans and ecru cauliflower, piled on crisp lettuce leaves. The eggs Benedictine were perfectly delicious. Agnes’s coffee was awfully good.

Jane felt her spirits rising in spite of her conscience. She knew that her mother wouldn’t even approve of this meal alone in the house with just André and Agnes. She wouldn’t like their eating in the kitchen and she’d think it was terribly funny that André could cook. But Jane really couldn’t feel that there was anything to disapprove of in all that. Going downtown alone, at night, with just another girl and boy⁠—that was different. Still, Jane’s spirits were rising. It was certainly lots of fun.

Jane washed the dishes, later, and Agnes wiped them. They wouldn’t let André help them, so he sat in one of the rockers and made funny suggestions, and, after asking Agnes’s permission, smoked two cigarettes. André had begun to smoke with his father last summer in Paris. He didn’t do it very often and it always made Jane feel very queer to see him. It brought home to her, terribly vividly, that they were all growing up.

André was grown up, thought Jane, as she listened to him bantering Agnes. He really looked just like a young man, as he sat smoking in that rocking chair. An experienced young man. Not a boy at all. André was nineteen. He was going back to Paris in June to stay⁠—Jane couldn’t bear to think of it⁠—really forever. To go to the Sorbonne and work at the Beaux Arts and learn how to be a sculptor. It would take him years and years.

And Agnes was going, too. Going to Europe to tutor a little girl and then to Bryn Mawr for four long winters. Things would never be the same again. It made Jane feel very sad to think of that.

And she, Jane, would just have to stay in Chicago and go to Farmington for a year with Flora and Muriel, and come home and live with the family and go out like Isabel and never get away at all. Never get out in the world to see all the beautiful things that she’d read of in books and André had told her about. Just stay in Chicago⁠—and grow up⁠—and grow old⁠—like her mother or even Mrs. Lester. Flora’s mother hadn’t grown old, like that, of course. But Jane knew very well that she could never grow up to be like Flora’s mother. Flora herself might. Or maybe Muriel. But never Jane. There were tears in her eyes as she hung up the last damp dishcloth.

“What’s the matter, Jane?” asked André, in the hall. Agnes had run upstairs to get her hat and coat. “You’re awfully serious tonight.”

“I was just thinking how old we all were,” said Jane, mustering up a smile. “And how soon it would be all over⁠—good times like this I mean⁠—with Agnes in college and you⁠—”

She broke off abruptly. She was terribly afraid that she was going to cry.

André caught up her hand, suddenly, in the darkness. Jane gave a little gasp of astonishment. Almost of fright.

“I’ll never be very far away from you, Jane,” said André solemnly, “wherever I am.”

Jane knew what he meant. It was dear of him to say it. She loved to think that he would take her with him, to all those lovely places that she might never see.

“And I’ll come back, Jane,” said André, still more solemnly. That was even more comforting.

“Will you, really?” she breathed. His face was very near her.

“Of course I will,” he said, almost roughly. “Don’t you know I will?”

He dropped her hand again, as Agnes ran down the stairs.

Agnes went out in the kitchen to lock the back door. André turned out the lights. Agnes locked the front door as they stood on the porch together. It all seemed very simple⁠—not to have anything more to bother about than just what was in this little brown house. Jane thought of the fuss there always was at home when anyone left for a party, with Minnie racing up and down stairs on forgotten errands, and someone at the front window, watching for the cab, and her mother in the hall giving last counsel and directions.

“Have you got your key, dear? I’ll be sitting up for you. Try not to muss that nice frock. If you have anything good to eat, remember what it was. Haven’t you got your party shoes? Minnie! Run upstairs and bring down Jane’s party shoes. Nod to the cabman, Isabel. She’ll be out in a minute!”

Jane thought it would be very restful to go out like this, just locking the door and leaving, with no questions asked. She walked soberly down the street between André and Agnes. Agnes’s arm was linked in hers. The lamps were lighted, now, in all the little houses. You could see them on tables, with families grouped around them. No one pulled down window shades, much, on Agnes’s street. At home it was a solemn ritual of the twilight. Here you could see fathers with newspapers and mothers with mending and children bothering them, in almost every house. It was fun to peek in at them and think of all those different lives.

At the Clark Street corner they waited for the cable-car. Jane began to feel very conscience-stricken again. The car rumbled up and stopped and they all climbed up in the grip car in front. It was such a lovely evening; it was fun to ride in the open air. Jane still liked to look down the crack where the levers were and watch the grip pick up the cable. She had loved to do it as a little girl.

The car went on down Clark Street. It looked awfully dark and not very respectable. The light from the cable car flashed in the spring puddles along the road. The stores were all dark except the saloons and drug stores on the corners, and an occasional café in the centre of a block. Down near the river they passed a cheap burlesque house. “Ten, Twenty, Thirty,” it said, over the door. Jane could read the sign quite clearly in the flaring gas lights. And underneath there was a poster of eight kicking ladies in tights and ballet skirts. “The Original Black Crook Chorus,” was the legend above them. And below in great red letters with exclamation points, “Girls!!! Girls!!! Girls!!!” A dismal-looking crowd was gathering about the entrance. Jane felt more conscience-stricken than ever. The cable car plunged into the La Salle Street tunnel under the river.

The crowds on the other side were much less dismal and the lights were brighter and there were many more of them. The theatregoers were gathering around the scattered playhouses. They looked very cheerful and gay. There was something sinister about it all, however. The city seemed very dark and dangerous to Jane, though André and Agnes were chattering gaily on, as if nothing out of the usual were transpiring.

They got off the car where it turned at the corner of Monroe Street and started to walk south on Dearborn. Jane slipped her arm through André’s. She really had to. She felt too queer and unprotected in that dim, nocturnal thoroughfare. After a few blocks they turned east again and very soon the familiar entrance of the Auditorium loomed up in the dark like an old friend.

André and Agnes pushed casually through the concert crowd and ran up the great staircase. Agnes had good seats, in the front row of the balcony. Jane always thought the music sounded better there than downstairs. She wondered, though, if any of her mother’s friends would see her, perched up alone with André and Agnes. They would think it was very queer.

The orchestra was already assembled on the enormous stage. Theodore Thomas made his entrance as they took their seats. The first bars of the Third Symphony diverted Jane’s mind from all temporal troubles. They wafted her away from the world of her mother and Isabel, and even from that of André and Agnes, on waves of purest sound to an ethereal region where the problem of chaperonage didn’t matter. Jane leaned forward in her seat, intent on the music, watching the little waving arms of Theodore Thomas pulling that mysterious magic out of strings and keys. The Eroica Symphony⁠—how beautifully named!

The second movement made her think of Dido⁠—the throbbing Marcia Funebre for all gallant souls. She whispered as much to Agnes and fell to listening with closed eyes, dreaming of the deserted queen and the flames of the funeral pyre and Aeneas’s white sailed ships turned toward the promised land across the tossing seas. “I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade,” she whispered softly. A proud thought. A self-respecting thought. Something to live and die for. Something much better than just keeping a restive Aeneas, tied to your apron-strings.

She came out of her trance at the applause of the intermission. André was wild with enthusiasm. Agnes was talking of the German music she hoped to hear that summer.

“While you drink beer, Agnes!” cried André cheerfully. “And eat sausage. Beer and sausage do a lot for a symphony!”

The last half of the program was all Wagner. It was over all too soon. André and Agnes and Jane descended the stairs very slowly. Jane was beginning to think once more of the Clark Street cable car.

“I’ll take you home in a four-wheeler,” said André magnificently, as they stood at the entrance. “Jane looks tired.”

Jane smiled at him gratefully. André always understood. He hailed a disreputable vehicle. They all climbed in. It smelled dreadfully of the stable. André lowered the windows. They rattled quickly north up Wabash Avenue and over the Rush Street bridge and down Ohio Street, then turned into Pine. Nice familiar streets, safe ones, that Jane had known from her babyhood. Jane slipped quickly out of the cab at her door.

“Don’t come up the steps with me, André,” she said. “I’m all right.”

She opened the door with her latchkey. It was not late, barely half-past ten. Her mother came out of the library. She looked quite pleased.

“I didn’t think,” she said, “that Mr. Johnson would have the sense to bring you home in a cab.”

Jane made no comment. It was really a backhanded compliment for André, if her mother only knew it. And this time her mother was right, though there was no use in saying so. Jane knew perfectly well that a girl of almost seventeen shouldn’t go downtown alone with a couple of contemporaries to a Thomas concert in a Clark Street car.

II

“Don’t get oil on that coat!” called Jane’s mother from the dining-room window. Jane was oiling her bicycle under the willow tree.

“Don’t worry!” retorted Jane with a grin. The coat was made of tan covert cloth with large leg-of-mutton sleeves. It had just come home from the tailor’s and Jane thought quite as well of it as her mother did. It looked very pretty with her blue serge skirt and white shirtwaist and small blue sailor. She had laid it very carefully on the grass before getting out her oil can.

It was late June and school was over. Jane had just been thinking, under the willow tree, how strange it was that school, incredibly, was over forever. The Commencement Exercises had been very impressive. Jane and Agnes and Flora and Muriel had sat in a row on a temporary platform at the end of the study hall with seven other classmates, all dressed in white muslin and carrying beautiful bouquets of roses. A clergyman had prayed over them and a professor from Northwestern University had delivered an address on “Success in Life,” and Miss Milgrim had made a little speech about the Class of ’94 and all it had done for the school and had handed each of them a little parchment diploma tied with blue and yellow ribbon. Blue and yellow were the school colors.

Ten days before that Jane had taken her Bryn Mawr examinations. Only last week she had heard that she had passed them. Her mother had received that information with a tolerant smile. But her father had been very much pleased. He had given her a little green enamel pin shaped like a four-leaved clover, for luck, with a real pearl, like a dew drop, in the centre. She was wearing it now, at the collar of her shirtwaist.

Jane felt a little sad when she thought of that important entity, the Class of ’94, already irrevocably scattered. Agnes had sailed for England and the day after school closed Flora and her mother had left for Bar Harbor. The Lesters were packing up for the White Mountains. Edith was going to join them there later with her beautiful little boy.

Jane would see Flora and Muriel, of course, in September, but Agnes was gone for a year and, what was much worse, André was leaving for France next week.

Jane was waiting for him now, in the afternoon sunshine, under the willow tree. She was going on a supper picnic with his father and mother up the lake shore beyond the City Limits. Jane was oiling her Columbia Safety in preparation for the fête. Suddenly she saw him, pedaling down Pine Street, a big picnic box strapped to his handlebars.

“Yoo-hoo,” she called.

He waved his cap and turned to bump up over the curb stone, then dismounted at the gate.

“Ready?” he asked.

Jane picked up her coat and wheeled her bicycle down the path.

“Just,” she said.

André held her coat for her.

“Isn’t this new?” he inquired.

She nodded, smiling under her tiny hat brim.

“It’s awfully good-looking.”

Jane mounted her wheel.

“Where are your father and mother?”

André pointed.

“Here they come,” he said. “Aren’t they sweet?”

Jane’s glance followed his finger. Half a block away Mr. and Mrs. Duroy were approaching down Pine Street. They were mounted on a tandem bicycle. Mrs. Duroy’s tall figure rose above the handlebars with a certain angular ease. Her long brown skirts flapped gaily against her mudguard and her sailor hat was rakishly askew. Mr. Duroy, behind her, was riding the bumps of the cedar-block pavement with Gallic grace. He wore a grey tweed suit with knickerbockers and he looked very plump and elderly and debonair. When he saw Jane he waved his tweed cap and tried to kiss his hand and his eyeglasses fell off promptly. The wheel wobbled perilously as he recaptured them.

“Don’t be so gallant!” said Mrs. Duroy. “Hello, Jane.”

Jane and André bumped down over the curb and swung into line with them. Jane’s mother was waving from the parlor window. She was laughing, a little, at Mr. and Mrs. Duroy, but she looked very good-natured. As if she weren’t thinking anything worse about Mr. Duroy than that he was French.

Jane and André sailed easily ahead of the tandem.

“They are sweet,” said Jane. “They have so much fun together.”

“They always do,” said André. And added simply, “They’re so much in love.”

That was a strange comment, thought Jane, to make on a pair of parents. She would never have thought of saying it about her father and mother. Nor about Flora’s mother and Mr. Furness. To be sure Mrs. Lester often spoke very tenderly to Edith and Rosalie and Muriel of their father. But that was different. He was dead. Now that she came to think of it, it was obviously quite true of Mr. and Mrs. Duroy. He never looked at her, queer as she sometimes looked, without a little beam of admiration in his wise brown eyes. Even when they argued, as they often did, and he disagreed with her utterly, he greeted the sallies that routed him with a whimsical air of flattering applause. Very different from her father’s “Oh, all right, Lizzie!” that terminated so many domestic discussions. Funny, when she thought of it, she could hardly remember Flora’s mother ever speaking to Mr. Furness at all, really speaking to him, even to argue. Marriage was a strange thing. It began, she supposed, as André said, by being so much in love and it ended?

André’s thoughts must have followed hers.

“They’re lucky, I suppose,” he said. “All marriages aren’t like that.”

Jane didn’t reply.

“But they could be,” said André, “if people cared enough.”

Jane went on pedaling in silence.

“I don’t see how it comes,” said André, “that change⁠—in the way you feel⁠—toward the girl you want to⁠—marry.”

Jane still felt that really she had nothing to say. André had never talked just like this before. Of how people felt. Real people⁠—not people in books. It was part of growing up, she supposed.

The lake was very bright and blue as they bowled along up the Drive. The Park was lovely in fresh June leaf. North of the Park the city stopped abruptly. The yards grew larger and the big brick and frame houses further apart and the pavement very much more bumpy. For some time they had to follow the car-tracks, jolting off the cobblestones at intervals, to let the horsecars jingle by. Soon they turned off toward the east again.

The road here was so sandy that they had to push the bicycles and there were no more houses. Just clumps of willow trees and groves of scrub-oak and stone pine, with wild flowers underfoot. They heard the lake before they saw it. The sound of little waves, breaking and pausing and breaking again, on the long hard beaches. They found an oak wood, crowning a tiny sand dune. The ground was blue with wild geranium and a few late violets, purple and yellow dogtooth, stunted by the cool lake breeze, still lingered in the damper places. Beyond the trees was the great stretch of yellow sand and the stainless wash of blue that was the lake.

Mr. Duroy stretched himself beneath an oak and took out a long black cigar. Mrs. Duroy began unpacking the picnic basket at once. She had brought a little brass kettle, with an alcohol lamp, in which to boil water for tea.

“Don’t be so restless, m’amie,” said Mr. Duroy lazily. “The sun is still high.”

“It’s six o’clock,” said Mrs. Duroy capably, as she laid the tablecloth. Jane was getting out the sandwiches. André was walking over the sand to fill the kettle in the little breakers.

“She must be practical,” said Mr. Duroy to Jane. “It’s her British blood. Thank God I’m a Celt. What is time on a night like this?” His brown eyes twinkled as he watched Jane arranging the sandwiches in neat little piles on the paper plates. “But you, too, little Jane, are practical.”

“Oh, no!” said Jane earnestly. “Really, I’m not.”

“Why, then,” continued Mr. Duroy lazily, “do you arrange the sandwiches?”

Jane could easily answer that.

“Oh,” she said again, “I just do what’s expected of me.”

“That’s a bad habit,” said Mr. Duroy seriously. “Especially for youth. You must stop that in time, or you’ll never get anywhere.”

Jane looked at him, a little perplexed. André came back with the kettle.

“What must Jane stop?” he asked.

“Doing what’s expected of her,” said Mr. Duroy promptly.

“You’re right,” said André. “The unexpected is what’s fun.”

Mr. Duroy nodded at him approvingly.

It was all very well, thought Jane, for them to talk like that. Their lives were full of funny surprises. In three weeks they’d all be in Paris, where anything might happen. But the unexpected was never allowed to happen to her. If it ever did, thought Jane, she’d embrace it with joy. She’d fight for it, against the world, and hug it to her heart.

When the water was boiling they all began to eat their supper. The sun sank down behind the oak trees in a saffron sky and a silver glow hung over the eastern horizon. Almost immediately the great golden disk of the moon came up out of the lake. It rose, incredibly quickly, balanced a moment on the water’s edge, then floated, free, in the clear evening air. The sky was still quite blue. Jane could see Venus, through the tree trunks, low in the west, paled to a yellow candle in the afterglow. The colour faded quickly out of the world. The lake grew grey and the path of the moon more silvery. When Venus vanished in the sunset mists Jane could count seven stars, high overhead, piercing the pale sky.

Mr. Duroy lit his second cigar. André produced his cigarette. Mrs. Duroy lay flat on her back, her hands under her head, gazing spellbound at the moon.

“It is a night for a serenade,” said Mr. Duroy. And no one contradicted him.

“Sing, André,” said his mother after a brief pause. “Sing, or your father will!”

André smiled a little self-consciously at Jane.

“Do, André,” she said.

He was sitting cross-legged on the grass beside her. His strong, capable hands, sculptor’s hands, she’d heard his mother say, were crossed between his knees. His cigarette trailed negligently from his slender fingers. Without moving, his eyes upon her face, he suddenly began to sing. His light, young tenor soared softly up in the words of the old nursery rhyme.

“Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami, Pierrot,
Prête moi ta plume,
Pour ecrire un mot,
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu,
Ouvre moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu!”

It was a serenade. Why, it was⁠—it was a love song. Jane had never heard that note of tender entreaty in André’s voice before. Her eyes fell quickly before his own. His mother was looking at him a little anxiously.

“Magnifique!” said Mr. Duroy. “It is a splendid old song. And it always makes me think of rocking you to sleep.” He cast away his cigar. “You inspire me to emulation!”

“Georges!” said André’s mother warningly.

“Mine,” said Mr. Duroy imperturbably, “is a more modern ballad. In tune with the age. And very appropriate to the lady of my dreams.” In his booming bass, humming as he started like a great bumble bee, trilling his r’s as he continued, he slipped into the familiar cadence of “Daisy Bell”:

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!
It won’t be a stylish marriage.
I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two!”

His voice was shaken with mock emotion. André’s mother and Jane were both laughing uproariously. André, however, sat very still, just smiling a little, his eyes on Jane’s face. Suddenly he sprang to his feet.

“Come walk on the beach,” he said.

Jane looked up at him questioningly. Then quickly at Mrs. Duroy. Her eyes were fastened on André and they had again that faintly worried look. André’s glance followed her own.

“It’s all right, isn’t it, Mother?” he said.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Quite all right, of course. But don’t stay long. We must be starting home.”

Jane rose to her feet and set off with André across the beach. They plodded silently down to the water where the sand was dark and firm and the little waves broke softly on the shingle.

“Jane,” said André almost immediately, “do you realize that I’m⁠—leaving you⁠—next week?”

“Yes,” said Jane softly.

There was a little pause.

“Jane,” said André again, “I can’t go without⁠—without talking to you.”

“Talking to me?” repeated Jane stupidly.

“Telling you,” said André. He was walking quickly along the beach, not looking at her. Jane was hurrying a little to keep up with him.

“Telling me?” she said.

Suddenly he stopped. He stood looking down at her in the moonlight.

“Telling you,” he said. “Though of course you know. Telling you that I⁠—love you.”

Jane felt her heart jump, as if it skipped a beat. She felt terribly excited. And terribly happy.

“Oh, André!” she said.

“I⁠—love you,” said André again.

She was staring up at him. His face looked very stern.

“Oh, do you?” she cried. “Do you, really?”

“Don’t you know?” said André.

Jane suddenly began to tremble, tremble uncontrollably, all over. She put out her hands to him, quickly. He clasped them in his own. Suddenly he seemed to realize how she was shaking.

“Jane!” he said, and his voice was suddenly tremulous. For a moment they stood staring into each other’s eyes. Then⁠—

“Jane!” he said again, and took her in his arms.

“My love,” said André.

Jane clung to him desperately. Why, this⁠—this was terrible. She was utterly shattered.

“Jane,” said André again, “look at me.”

Obediently she raised her eyes to his.

“You’re crying!” said André. Jane hadn’t known it.

“Jane⁠—you do love me,” said André.

Jane only wept the more.

“Kiss me,” said André.

She raised her lips to his. The ground fell away from under her feet. The world was no more. Nothing existed but just⁠—herself and⁠—André.

“My love,” he said again.

She opened her eyes, then, upon his face. And there was the moon and the lake and the beach. The world hadn’t vanished, after all.

“André!” she said desperately, “What will we do?”

“You’ll marry me,” said André.

She pushed away his arms.

“André⁠—I can’t. We’re too young.”

“You’re seventeen,” said André.

“Last month,” said Jane.

“I don’t care,” said André. “You’ll marry me.”

“André⁠—I can’t.” The world was back indeed. Jane was thinking desperately of her mother⁠—and Isabel⁠—and, yes, even of her father. “They’ll never let me.”

“I’ll talk to them tomorrow. I’ll tell Father tonight.”

“And your mother, André. They’ll never let you!”

“Oh, yes, they will,” said André. “When I tell them.”

“Marry you,” said Jane wonderingly. “Marry you⁠—now?”

“If you will,” said André.

“I⁠—I couldn’t⁠—now.” The thought of temporizing brought a little hope. “I am too young.”

“Well⁠—later, then,” said André confidently. “In the fall. When your family are used to it. I’ll come back and get you⁠—”

Suddenly just his saying it seemed to make it true.

“Oh, André,” breathed Jane. “I⁠—I can’t believe it.”

“What?” said André.

“That we’re⁠—engaged.”

“You bet we are,” said André.

“André!” It was his mother’s voice. “You must bring Jane back. We’re leaving, now.”

“Kiss me, again,” said André. He took her once more in his arms. This second kiss was not quite so wildly unexpected. And his mother was calling.

“André!”

“Yes, Mother! We’re coming.” They turned back across the beach.

“I have you, now,” said André. “I have you.”

Jane didn’t deny it. She clung to his arm until they were very near the oak grove.

The supper was all packed away. Mr. Duroy still sat beneath his tree but Mrs. Duroy was erect by the tandem. She looked at André still a little anxiously, Jane thought.

They pushed their wheels in silence back to the car tracks.

“Stay with us, children,” said André’s mother. “It’s very late.” They pedaled slowly home. The park was filled with bicycles. Their myriad lamps glittered like fireflies in its bosky alleys. Jane kept glancing at André’s face in the moonlight. It was very stern again. But beautiful, Jane thought. He threw her a smile, now and then. A happy, confident smile. Mr. and Mrs. Duroy went with them to her house. André, however, walked into the yard. She went to the side door because she had her bicycle. Mr. and Mrs. Duroy were waiting at the curb. As Jane was getting out her key, he pulled her quickly into the vestibule.

“Good night,” said André, taking her in his arms.

“Good night,” she breathed, against his lips.

“I’ll come⁠—tomorrow afternoon⁠—to see your father.”

“Oh, André,” she whispered fearfully.

“You’re mine,” said André, “and I’ll never give you up.”

Jane unlocked the door.

“Good night,” she said again, and smiled up at him. He blew her a little kiss. She slipped into the hall. He vanished, down the path. Jane closed the door and stood a moment, quite still, leaning against the panels. “I’m his,” she thought. “He’ll never give me up.” It was very late. The family were all in bed. Jane turned out the back hall light. “He loves me,” she thought, as she crept up the stairs. “André loves me.” She paused a moment by her mother’s door. She tapped gently on the wooden panels.

“I’m in,” said Jane. A sleepy murmur was the only reply. Then, “Did you turn out the light?”

“Yes,” said Jane and went on down the hall. “He loves me,” she thought, as she opened her bedroom door. “André loves me.”

III

Jane came downstairs, next morning, a little late to breakfast. The family were all at the table. Isabel was talking of Robin Bridges. He had invited her to go to the theatre with Rosalie and Freddy Waters. As Rosalie and Freddy were engaged, Isabel thought it would be quite proper for the four of them to go alone. But her mother was standing firm.

“No,” she said. “Not without a married couple.”

Jane slipped silently into her seat and unfolded her napkin. It seemed very strange to hear her mother and Isabel, arguing just as usual, and to see her father buried, as always, in the morning Tribune, and to realize that for them this golden morning was just like any other. For her it opened a new era. Jane felt a little guilty as she hugged her happy secret to her heart. And very much frightened. And terribly excited.

Just after breakfast the telephone rang. Jane rushed to the pantry to answer it. Yes, it was André. His voice sounded just a little confused, but cheerful, too.

“Hello,” he said. “How⁠—how are you?”

“Oh⁠—I’m fine,” said Jane. Her heart was beating fast.

“Happy?” said André.

“Oh⁠—yes,” breathed Jane. That was all. It seemed to satisfy André.

“When does your father come home?” asked André.

“Half-past five,” said Jane.

“Mother thinks,” said André, “that I⁠—I oughtn’t to see you again, until I speak to him.”

“What else does she think?” asked Jane anxiously.

“Well,” said André, and his voice sounded just a little rueful. “She⁠—she thinks it’s all right⁠—now.”

“What did your father say?” asked Jane.

André’s voice seemed to hesitate.

“He⁠—he was awfully surprised,” he said. “Much more surprised than Mother. But they⁠—they understood⁠—after I talked to them.”

“André,” said Jane miserably, “they don’t like it.”

“Oh, yes⁠—they do,” said André uncertainly. “At least⁠—”

Then with increasing confidence, “They like you, Jane. It’s⁠—it’s just what they think⁠—” He stopped.

“We’re young,” said Jane.

“Yes,” said André.

“Well⁠—we are,” said Jane.

“Anyway,” said André cheerfully, “Father said of course I must tell your father.”

There was a little pause.

“It’s really all right,” said André.

Jane wished she could be sure of that.

“Well⁠—goodbye,” said Jane. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

A funny little sound clicked in Jane’s ear.

“That was a kiss,” said André. “Goodbye⁠—dear.”

Jane hung up the receiver and pressed her forehead weakly against the mouthpiece. Dear André⁠—darling André. She was terribly frightened. Yet radiantly happy, through and through. She could hear his voice still, with that funny little break at the end. “Goodbye⁠—dear.” He did love her. She had said she would marry him. Marry⁠—André. But they were much too young. Her mother⁠—

Jane walked slowly up the stairs to her own bedroom and closed the door. She sat down at the window and looked out at the willow tree. It seemed only yesterday that she and André had climbed it. The remnants of their tree house⁠—a few weather-beaten planks⁠—were still visible in its middle branches. She was going to marry André. She was going to be his wife.

At five o’clock Jane took up her stand in the parlor window to wait for her father. Isabel was out playing tennis, thank goodness, on the Superior Street courts. Her mother was in the kitchen superintending the solemn rites of the June jelly-making. You could smell the cooking currants all over the house. Presently Jane saw her father come around the corner. In a moment he passed the parlor window. Jane leaned against the screen and watched him up the steps. He was whistling “The Bowery” and looked a little warm but very nice and carefree. Jane felt guilty again. She heard his key in the door.

Jane heard the door open and close and her father’s quick step in the hall. She heard the click of his sailor hat as he dropped it on the bench beneath the hat-rack. Then his footsteps receded toward his library and were lost. Silence and the smell of cooking currants dominated the house once more.

She ought to go in, thought Jane, and⁠—and talk to him. She ought to break the ice for André. It would be terrible for André. She walked slowly toward the parlor door. At the entrance to the library she paused. Her father was seated at his desk, running through the afternoon mail.

“Come in, kid,” he said.

Jane entered slowly. Her father went on opening letters. Jane stood beside the globe and looked down at him.

“What’s the matter, kid?” asked her father. “You look as sober as a judge.”

“Nothing,” said Jane.

Her father threw some mail in the waste basket. Then he looked up again with a smile.

“Anyone dead?” he inquired cheerfully.

“No,” said Jane.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked. “Been worrying about Bryn Mawr?”

“No,” said Jane. Bryn Mawr, indeed!

“Well⁠—don’t,” said her father. “I’ll see you get there.”

“Papa⁠—” began Jane desperately, and stopped.

“Yes,” said her father.

“Papa,” said Jane again, “I⁠—I want you to help me.”

“All right,” said her father. “I will.”

“I⁠—I hope you will,” said Jane a little desperately, then went on in a rush. “I⁠—I want you to understand. I want you to remember that I⁠—I’m not a⁠—a child, any more. I want you to be good to André. I want⁠—”

“Good to André?” repeated her father. He looked very much astonished.

“Yes⁠—good to André,” said Jane. And then the doorbell rang. She rushed incontinently from the room and halfway up the stair. Minnie was coming out of the pantry. Jane sat down, just above the first landing. Minnie opened the front door. Jane could see André quite distinctly, from the dark of the staircase. He couldn’t see her.

“Is Mr. Ward in?” he asked. His voice sounded very brave and steady to Jane.

“Yes,” said Minnie and led him to the library door.

“Mr. Ward?” Jane heard him say, on the threshold. And then her father’s voice. “Come in, André.” She heard her father’s footsteps. André vanished into the library. An unknown hand closed the door.

Jane sat quite still, crouched down beside the bannisters. She couldn’t hear a thing. Not even the sound of muffled voices. It was dark on the staircase. The afternoon sunshine came slanting in, below, through the ground-glass panels of the front door. Little motes were dancing in it, up and down the hall. Jane clasped her hands and really prayed for André. She was praying to her father, she thought, though, not to God. Praying to her father, through that closed library door, to understand, to realize, to be good to André. The minutes slowly passed. It was so quiet she could hear the clock tick in the dining room.

Presently her mother came out through the pantry door. She had on a long white apron, stained with currant juice, and her hair was ruffled. She looked very flushed and pretty after an afternoon in the hot kitchen. But not very neat. She noticed André’s hat on the hat-rack, immediately.

“Who is here, Minnie?” she called over her shoulder.

“Mr. André,” said Minnie from the pantry.

“Where is he?” asked her mother.

“He asked for Mr. Ward,” said Minnie.

“For Mr. Ward?” said Jane’s mother incredulously. Then after a pregnant pause, “Where is he, now?”

“They’re both in the library,” said Minnie.

Then Jane’s mother perceived Jane. She looked her up and down as she sat crouched on the staircase.

“What does André want of your father?” she said.

Jane didn’t reply.

“Jane!” said Jane’s mother.

Jane stared at her in silence.

“What does this mean?” said Jane’s mother.

“Oh, Mamma!” pleaded Jane, suddenly finding her voice. “Please⁠—please don’t⁠—spoil it. Let him talk to Papa! Oh, Mamma⁠—”

Without another word, regardless alike of Jane’s imploring entreaties and her own currant-stained apron, Mrs. Ward opened the library door. She closed it after her. Jane sat quite still, for several minutes, in horror. Then she heard her mother’s voice raised in incredulous indignation behind the closed door.

“I never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life! John, you haven’t been listening to them? André⁠—it⁠—it’s perfectly absurd⁠—”

Jane waited to hear no more. She flung herself hotly down the stairs and burst in at the library door.

Her father was sitting very quietly in a leather armchair and André was erect at his side. Her mother stood in the centre of the room, her flushed, indignant face turned toward the men before her. She looked quickly at Jane.

“Jane, leave the room,” she said.

“I won’t,” said Jane. And closed the door behind her. Her father held out his hand.

“Come here, kid,” he said. Jane rushed to his side. She looked quickly up at André. She hoped her heart was in her eyes. André smiled steadily down at her. He looked shaken, however.

“Jane⁠—” began her mother again.

“Lizzie,” said her father, and there was a note in his voice Jane had never heard before. “Leave this to me.”

Her mother, with compressed lips, sank down in the other armchair. Her father pressed Jane’s hand very kindly.

“Kid,” he said gently. “You know this won’t do.”

“What won’t do?” cried Jane in desperation.

Her father still held her hand.

“You⁠—you and André can’t⁠—get married.”

“Why not?” flashed Jane.

“Because you’re children,” said her father. It was terribly true.

“I don’t care!” said Jane.

“Well, I do,” said her father. “And so does your mother. And so do André’s parents. He very honestly told me that. And so does André, really. André doesn’t want to persuade you to do anything that isn’t right⁠—that won’t bring you happiness⁠—”

Happiness! Jane threw a tearful glance at André. He looked very proud and stern, standing there before her father. He gave her a tremulous smile.

“Papa,” said Jane, “I know I’d be happy with André⁠—”

“Don’t talk like that!” cried her mother sharply. But her father silenced her.

“You think so now, kid,” he said kindly. “But you can’t tell. You don’t know anything about it, either of you. André’s nineteen years old. He’s got five or six years of education ahead of him, on his own say-so, before he can be any kind of a sculptor. You were seventeen last month. You’ve known André for four years and you’ve never said three words to any other boy. You can’t know your own mind and he can’t know his, either. Five or six years from now, you might both understand what you were talking about. André’s going to France next week, to live. He’s a Frenchman and that’s where he belongs. You’ve got to stay here with your mother and me and grow up into a woman before you talk about marrying anyone.”

“I⁠—I don’t have to⁠—marry him,” said Jane faintly. “I just want to⁠—to promise that I will when we’re old enough. I just want⁠—”

“Jane,” said her mother very reasonably, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We don’t have to think of that now.”

“I just⁠—want to⁠—wait for him,” faltered Jane. Then, with a flash of spirit, “You can’t help my waiting!”

“Of course not,” said her father pacifically. “But no promises, André, on either side.”

“And no letters,” put in her mother. Jane’s father shook his head at her, but she insisted. “No, John. No letters until Jane’s twenty-one. You must promise that, André. I won’t have her tied down to any understanding.”

“I guess that’s right, André,” said Jane’s father soberly. “You’d better promise.”

Jane and André exchanged a glance of despair. There was a brief pause.

“How about it, my boy?” said Jane’s father.

“I⁠—I promise,” said André huskily.

Jane’s mother gave a sigh of relief. She had the situation in hand now.

“I think you had better go, André,” she said very kindly.

“Can I see Jane again?” André asked.

“I think you’d better not,” said Jane’s mother. “It would only be painful.”

“Then I’d like⁠—I’d like⁠—” said André steadily, “to say goodbye to her now.”

“Of course,” said Jane’s father, very promptly rising. “Come, Lizzie.”

Jane’s mother looked very reluctant to leave the room.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Mrs. Ward,” said André, “you can trust me.”

Jane’s father threw him an admiring glance. He fairly pushed her mother from the room. He closed the door behind them. Jane turned to gaze at André.

“André,” she said breathlessly, “what⁠—what can we do?”

“We can wait,” said André. “And we can think of each other.”

“André,” said Jane earnestly, “did⁠—did your father and mother talk like that, too?”

“They didn’t talk like that⁠—but they thought the same things. I⁠—I could see them thinking.”

“They didn’t⁠—like it?”

“They like you,” said André. “Father said you were a girl in a thousand.”

“Well, then?” said Jane.

“Mother thought I was much too young and she thought I ought to be able to support a wife before I asked a girl to marry me. She thought it was pretty rotten⁠—my asking you. And Father⁠—well, Father had always expected me to marry in France, of course. And we’re⁠—we’re all Catholics. That doesn’t mean much to me, but it does to him. But when I told them how⁠—how I felt about you⁠—well, they said⁠—all right I could try my luck with your father. I⁠—didn’t have much. Though he was awfully decent. I haven’t a leg to stand on, of course. I can’t support you and I⁠—I’ve got to go to France⁠—you⁠—you⁠—understand that, Jane⁠—I’ve got to go⁠—to study, you know, if I’m ever going to amount to anything. Father and Mother both said that. I couldn’t do anything here. I⁠—I guess I don’t sound like much of a son-in-law⁠—”

“But, André,” said Jane, “do you mean⁠—do you mean that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can do?”

“Well,” said André, “what is there?” What was there, indeed?

“I⁠—I shouldn’t have asked you,” said André.

“Oh, André!” cried Jane. “You must never think that!”

“Why not?” said André.

“You made me so happy,” said Jane simply.

André took a quick step toward her. Then he stopped. He remembered.

“Oh, Jane!” he said, and dropped down on the sofa. “Jane⁠—my love!” He buried his face in his hands.

Jane sank down on her knees beside him. She pulled his hands away from his face. André was crying. She took him in her arms.

“André!” she said breathlessly, “André!” She looked eagerly up at him.

“I⁠—I promised your mother,” he said huskily.

“I didn’t promise anyone!” cried Jane desperately. “André⁠—you must kiss me goodbye!”

He took her in his arms. His lips met hers. The world was lost again. But this time Jane knew that it was really there, pressing close about them, menacing them, parting them, saying they were⁠—young. She slipped from his embrace. She rose to her feet. André stood up, too, and held out his hands. She seized them in her own. He stooped to kiss her fingers.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“André,” she said, “I’ll always⁠—”

He managed a wavering smile.

“No promises,” he said. “Just thoughts.”

“All my thoughts!” said Jane. He stumbled toward the door. On the threshold he turned again.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“André!” cried Jane. “I⁠—I can’t bear it!” She heard her father’s voice in the hall.

“I’m sorry, André. You⁠—you’ve behaved so well, both of you.” Their steps died down the passage. Jane heard the front door open and close. She rushed to the window. André was walking, furiously fast, up Pine Street. At the corner he turned to look back. She waved wildly. She kissed her hand. He smiled again, very bravely. Then turned and vanished. Jane flung herself face downward on the sofa. The mark of André’s elbow was still on the pillow. She buried her face in it passionately. She heard her father enter the room. He walked slowly over to the sofa.

“Little Jane,” he said, “don’t cry like that.”

Jane only buried her face the deeper. There was a little pause.

“Kid,” said her father, “you’re so young that you don’t know that you’ll get over it. You get over everything.”

Jane thought that was a horrible philosophy. She heard her father moving about a little helplessly. Then he bent over and touched her shoulder.

“I’ll see you go to Bryn Mawr,” he said, “with Agnes.”

“Oh, let me alone!” cried Jane. “Just⁠—let⁠—me⁠—alone!” She heard her father turn and walk quietly out of the room. Jane put both her arms tightly around André’s pillow. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. She thought it was breaking.