"Oh--oh, don't, please! Just let me laugh.If I don't laugh Ishall cry, and I don't want to do that.Just don't talk to me for a few minutes, that's all."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.""Mistaken? About me, do you mean?"
"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.""What on earth do you mean by that?"
"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."
"Go on; say it."
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.""Active? Say, look here, Helen! What--""Oh, I don't wonder you don't understand.I mean that you were rather--rather fond of not doing much--of--of--"1
"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.""Which I don't."
"And that some day you were going to do something else."Which I am."
"Write or act or do something--"
"Yes, and that's true, too."
"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?""No-o.No, but that doesn't mean I shan't by and by.""But you didn't begin as you said you would.That was last spring, more than a year ago, and I don't believe you have tried to write a single poem.Have you?"He was beginning to be ruffled.It was quite unusual for any one, most of all for a girl, to talk to him in this way.
"I don't know that I have," he said loftily."And, anyway, I don't see that it is--is--""My business whether you have or not.I know it isn't.I'm sorry I spoke.But, you see, I-- Oh, well, never mind.And I do want you to know how much I appreciate your helping me as you did just now.I don't know how to thank you for that."But thanks were not exactly what he wanted at that moment.
"Go ahead and say the rest," he ordered, after a short pause.
"You've said so much that you had better finish it, seems to me.
I'm lazy, you think.What else am I?"
"You're brave, awfully brave, and you are so strong and quick--yes, and--and--masterful; I think that is the right word.You ordered me about as if I were a little girl.I didn't want to keep still, as you told me to; I wanted to scream.And I wanted to faint, too, but you wouldn't let me.I had never seen you that way before.Ididn't know you could be like that.That is what surprises me so.
That is why I said you were so different."Here was balm for wounded pride.Albert's chin lifted."Oh, that was nothing," he said."Whatever had to be done must be done right off, I could see that.You couldn't hang on where you were very long."She shuddered."No," she replied, "I could not.But _I_ couldn't think WHAT to do, and you could.Yes, and did it, and made me do it."The chin lifted still more and the Speranza chest began to expand.
Helen's next remark was in the natures of a reducer for the said expansion.
"If you could be so prompt and strong and--and energetic then," she said, "I can't help wondering why you aren't like that all the time.I had begun to think you were just--just--""Lazy, eh?" he suggested.
"Why--why, no-o, but careless and indifferent and with not much ambition, certainly.You had talked so much about writing and yet you never tried to write anything, that--that--""That you thought I was all bluff.Thanks! Any more compliments?"She turned on him impulsively."Oh, don't!" she exclaimed.
"Please don't! I know what I am saying sounds perfectly horrid, and especially now when you have just saved me from being badly hurt, if not killed.But don't you see that--that I am saying it because I am interested in you and sure you COULD do so much if you only would? If you would only try."This speech was a compound of sweet and bitter.Albert characteristically selected the sweet.
"Helen," he asked, in his most confidential tone, "would you like to have me try and write something? Say, would you?""Of course I would.Oh, will you?"
"Well, if YOU asked me I might.For your sake, you know."She stopped and stamped her foot impatiently.
