eet drop was in their cup of iron. As woodland playmates they
could never have known such intimacy as hovered about them when she
rested her head lightly against his knees and they watched the Hudson,
the storms and flurries of light on its waves, the windy clouds and
the processional of barges, the beetle-like ferries and the great
steamers for Albany. They talked in half sentences, understanding the
rest: "Tough in winter----" "Might be good trip----" Carl's hand was
always demanding her thick hair, but he stroked it gently. The coarse,
wholesome vigor was drained from him; part even of his slang went with
it; his "Gee!" was not explosive.

He took to watching her like a solemn baby, when she moved about the
room; thus she found the little boy Carl again; laughed full-throated
and secretly cried over him, as his sternness passed into a wistful
obedience. He was not quite the same impudent boy whose naughtiness
she had loved. But the good child who came in his place did trust her
so, depend upon her so....

When Carl was strong enough they went for three weeks to Point
Pleasant, on the Jersey coast, where the pines and breakers from the
open sea healed his weakness and his multitudinous worries. They even
swam, once, and Carl played at learning two new dances, strangely
called the "fox trot" and the "lu lu fado." Their hotel was a vast
barn, all porches, white flannels, and handsome young Jews chattering
tremendously with young Jewesses; but its ball-room floor was smooth,
and Ruth had lacked music and excitement for so long that she danced
every night, and conducted an amiable flirtation with a mysterious
young man of Harvard accent, Jewish features, fine brown eyes, and
tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses, while Carl looked on, a contented
wall-flower.

They came back to town with ocean breeze and pine scent in their
throats and sea-sparkle in their eyes--and Carl promptly tied himself
to the office desk as though sickness and recovery had never given him
a vision of play.

Ruth had not taken the Point Pleasant dances seriously, but as day on
day she stifled in a half-darkened flat that summer, she sometimes
sobbed at the thought of the moon-path on the sea, the reflection of
lights on the ball-room floor, the wavelike swish of music-mad feet.

The flat was hot, dead. The summer heat was unrelenting as bedclothes
drawn over the head and lashed down. Flies in sneering circles mocked
the listless hand she flipped a