were briskly hailed by the occupants of other passing boats. Hal lightened momentarily as he answered the merry salutations, then relapsed into somber gravity.
“What a lot of people you know at Severn Beach, Hal.” Marjorie was glad to find her voice again. Hal was waving an acknowledgment to a noisy, rollicking crew of young men in a passing power launch who had sent out a ringing hail to him.
“I only know a bunch of yachtsmen and a few other fellows.” Hal disclaimed popularity with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “The Clipper, my racing sailboat, is better known along this coast than I am. Oh, but she’s a winner!” Hal brightened with pride of ownership. “She won every race I entered her for last summer. She’s won two this season, and she’s entered in a spiffy race the yacht club is going to pull off in a couple of weeks. You’d better stay at the beach and see it. I’ll take you aboard for the race, if you’ll stay.” Half laughingly, half pleadingly he offered this bribe.
“That would be glorious; to be in a real race!” Marjorie looked her regret. “You’re always so good to me, Hal; always planning some perfectly dandy stunt just to please me. But you know how it is about Hamilton. I feel it truly a sacred obligation; my work there, I mean. I couldn’t allow personal pleasure to come before it.”
“No; nor love, either,” Hal burst forth with a hurt vehemence which brought the hot blood to Marjorie’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon, Marjorie,” he said almost immediately afterward. “I spoke on impulse. Still, that’s the way I feel about your going back to Hamilton next fall when I love you so dearly and want you to marry me. I wish you cared even half as much for me as you do for your work at Hamilton. But you don’t care at all.”
“I do care for you, Hal, as one of the best friends I have,” Marjorie protested, raising her brown eyes sorrowfully to Hal’s clouded face.
“I know,” Hal rejoined a shade less forcefully. “I value your friendship, Marjorie, more highly than I can say. But friendship’s not what I want from you, dear girl. I love you, truly and forever. I’ve loved you since first you came to Sanford to live. I’d have told you so long ago but you never gave me an opportunity.” Hal paused. He regarded Marjorie wistfully; questioningly.
“I – I know it, Hal,” she admitted reluctantly, but with her usual honesty. “I – I haven’t wished you to talk of love to me. There were times last winter” – she stopped in confusion – “when I thought you cared – a little. I – I wasn’t sure.”
“Be very sure of it, now.” Hal’s reply was a mixture of tenderness and dejection.
“I don’t want you to love me, Hal,” Marjorie cried out almost sharply in her desire to be emphatic. “Last night, after what you said to me on the beach, I couldn’t help but be sure. I – I told Captain of it. I always tell her everything. Captain is sorry I don’t love you. She and General are fond of you. They’d be happy if we were – if we were – to become engaged.” Marjorie spoke the last words hesitatingly.
“I’m glad you told your mother. You know how fine I think both General and Captain are.” Hal fought back the hurt look that threatened to invade his face. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles stood out whitely against the sun-tanned brown of his hands.
Marjorie caught a glimpse of the unhappiness which sprang straight from her old comrade’s sore heart and into his eyes.
“There; I’ve hurt you, Hal! Truly I never meant to!” she exclaimed in quick contrition.
“Never mind me.” Hal made a gesture of self-depreciation. “It isn’t your fault because you can’t find it in your heart to love me.” He forced a smile, proudly trying to conceal his own desolation of spirit.
Her eyes remorsefully fixed on him the smile did not deceive Marjorie. Hal’s tensity of feature informed her of the weight of the blow she had just dealt him.
“Please, please, Hal, forgive me!” she begged with a sudden excess of pained humility.
“Forgive you? For what?” Hal bent a fond questioning glance on Marjorie’s troubled face.
“For – for – not loving you,” she faltered. “It hurts me dreadfully to know that I must be the one to make you unhappy. Forgive me for seeming to be so hard and unsympathetic about love. I’ve never thought of it for myself. It has always seemed vague and far away; like something not a part of my life. I know the love between Connie and Laurie is wonderful. I can appreciate their devotion to each other. I have the greatest impersonal reverence for love and lovers. But for me life means endeavor and the glory of achievement.”
The voice of ambitious, inspirited youth sang in her tones, half appealing though they were. Came an embarrassed stillness between them. Hal’s face, strong, even stern in its self-repression was turned partly away from her. The bleakness of his suffering young soul peered forth from his deep blue eyes as he stared steadily across the dimpling sun-touched waves.
“Nothing matters in life but love. To love and to be loved in return,” he said slowly, but with a kind of fatalistic decision. “You’ll love someone, someday, even though you can’t love me.” The shadow on Marjorie’s face deepened as she listened. It was almost as though in a flash of second sight Hal were telling her a fortune she did not care to hear. “When love truly comes to you, then you’ll understand what you can’t understand now,” he ended.
“I don’t want love to come to me. I don’t wish to understand it,” Marjorie made sad protest. “Since it isn’t in my heart to love you, I should never wish to love any one else. You’re the finest, gentlest, truest boy I’ve ever known, Hal, or ever expect to know.”
Hal’s half averted face was suddenly turned toward Marjorie. Across it flashed a rare sweet smile which lived long afterward in her memory. “It’s as I told you last night, Marjorie Dean. You haven’t grown up.” Tender amusement had mercifully broken into and lightened his gloom. “You only think you have,” he said. Marjorie’s naive avowal had brought with it a faint stirring of new hope.
“Yes, Hal, I’ve grown up,” Marjorie began seriously. “It’s not – ”
“You’ll never really grow up until love finds the way to your heart,” Hal interrupted with gentle positiveness. “I hope when it does it will be love for me. I can’t give you up, dear. I’m going to call you ‘dear’ this once. I’d rather have your friendship than the love of any other girl in the world. I’m going to wait for you to grow up.”
CHAPTER V. – A WARM RECEPTION
“Hamilton! Hamilton!” Marjorie Dean smiled to herself. Her expressive brown eyes grew brighter as the lusty call echoed through the car. One hand tightened about the leather handle of her traveling bag with the impatience of one who was longing to be free of the limited confines of the car. She peered alertly out of the open window at the familiar railway platform which lay deserted in the warm glory of a mid-summer sun. How strange it seemed to see the good old platform so bare and empty!
“Not a sign of Robin,” was her disappointed reflection. “What’s happened to her, I wonder? I’m evidently first here after all. She can’t have arrived yet or she would surely be out on the platform watching for me.”
The three or four persons, whose destination was also Hamilton were now moving down the aisle toward the car’s upper door. Marjorie did not follow the orderly little line of passengers. She turned and hurried to the opposite end of the car impatient to be out of the train. She was glad to be the only one to leave the car from that end.
“Oh-h-h.”
