ason that they wished to be true in their love,
they said things in their letters that a spoken word or a gesture would
have explained in an instant but that no printed alphabet could; and
so they often hurt each other while meaning and trying to help all they
could.

Not quite as easy as it had seemed at first--oh, not on your life not,
thought Oliver, rousing out of a gloomy muse. And then there was the
writing he wanted to do--and Nancy's etching--"our damn careers" they
had called them--but those _were_ the things they did best--and neither
had had even tolerable working conditions recently--

Well, sufficient to the day was the evil thereof--that was one of those
safe Bible-texts you seemed to find more and more use for the older you
grew. Bible-texts. It was lucky tomorrow was Sunday when slaves of the
alarm-clock had peace. Oliver straightened his shoulders unconsciously
and turned back to the blank paper. He did love Nancy. He did love
Nancy. That was all that counted.

"Oh, felicitous Nancy!
Your letter was--"

VIII

The water was a broken glass of blue, sunstruck waves--there were few
swimmers in it where the two friends went in next morning, for the beach
proper with its bath-houses and float was nearly a quarter of a mile
down. Oliver could see Margaret's red cap bobbing twenty yards out as he
tried the water cautiously with curling toes, and, much farther out, a
blue cap and the flash of an arm going suddenly under. Mrs. Severance,
the friend Louise had brought out for the week-end, he supposed; she
swam remarkably for a woman. He swam well enough himself and couldn't
give her two yards in the hundred. Ted stood beside him, both tingling a
little at the fresh of the salt air. "Wow!" and they plunged.

A mock race followed for twenty yards--then Oliver curved off to duck
Margaret, already screaming and paddling at his approach, while Ted kept
on.

He swam face deep, catching short breaths under the crook of his arm,
burying himself in the live blue running sparkle, every muscle stretched
as if he were trying to rub all the staleness that can come to the mind
and the restless pricklings that will always worry the body clean from
him, like a snake's cast skin, against the wet rough hands of the water.
There--it was working--the flesh was compact and separate no longer--he
felt it dissolve into the salt push of spray--become one with that long
blue body of wave that stretched fluently radiant