onsciousness of comparative failure
had disheartened him. He needed the tonic of sea air and of idleness and
of contact with inartistic, care-free humanity. Furthermore, Thayer felt
that he himself might need the tonic of the simple-hearted affection of
the young German. The world about him was too complex. There were days
when the most conventional of incidents seemed weighted with a hidden
meaning, burdened with a consciousness of their own future import.

The summer days passed swiftly and with a certain monotony. During the
mornings while Thayer was practising, Lorimer and Beatrix idled away the
hours together. Later in the day, Thayer always appeared at Monomoy,
sometimes with Lorimer, sometimes alone. Occasionally Beatrix forsook
them both, and went off for long walks with Arlt or floated lazily about
the harbor with him, leaving her mother to entertain the young men with
garrulous recollections of her own childhood.

One subject was forever sealed between Beatrix and Thayer, to one
evening's events they neither of them ever alluded. Now and then, at
some careless turn of the conversation, one or the other of them would
stealthily raise his eyes to find the other furtively watching him; and
their eyes would drop apart again swiftly. It was obvious to Thayer that
Beatrix was carrying a heavy care, that summer. If Lorimer were tardy in
appearing, she was absent and restless; if he came upon her suddenly,
she started; if he talked or laughed more than usual, she invented an
excuse to take him away from the group, apart from the general
conversation. Occasionally, it was evident to Thayer that she was trying
to take him, himself, off his guard, seeking to make him betray himself,
in case he was sharing in her watchfulness. Upon such occasions,
Thayer's mental armor became as impenetrable as a corselet of steel. If
he were keeping guard over Lorimer, amusing him and circumventing him in
a thousand different ways, it was not only for Lorimer's sake, but for
that of Beatrix as well, and it was imperative that Beatrix should never
know. The day had passed forever when he could look into Miss Gannion's
clear eyes and declare with perfect truthfulness that Beatrix was
nothing in the world to him. He admitted this to himself; he also
admitted that there are an infinite number of gradations between the
opposite poles, nothing and something. There was no especial need of
deciding which one of them marked his present status.