Glory of Youth | Page 8

the door on the porch. Miss Diana used to like to lie and look at the moonlight."
The whole world seemed obsessed by the moonlight. Its white radiance, when Mrs. Martens at last turned off the glaring bulbs, seemed to cast a spell over sea and land. She stepped out on the porch, and was awed by the beauty of the wide sweep of shining sky and sea. Then, far below on the hidden road, she heard the beat of a motor.
The sound ceased and a man's quick step came up the path. There was the whirr of an electric bell, and she knew that Anthony had come.
Well, Diana had her Anthony--and she had--Peter! She laughed a little to stifle a sigh. Diana had the substance--she her shadowy memories.
A faint breeze had sprung up. The yachts tugged at their moorings as the tide turned. Far to the southeast Minot's light blinked its one-four-three--"I-warn-you"--message to the ships. Diana had once said of it, "The sweethearts off the coast translate it differently--'I-love-you.' That's what Anthony told me."
How she had always quoted him! Even when for a brief time she had drifted toward that other, she had clung to her belief in Anthony's faith and goodness--and when she had shaken herself free she had flown back to him.
And now--in the dim room below Diana was coming at last into her own!
The little lady crept into bed, shivering--perhaps with the chill of the spring night, perhaps with the thought of the happiness from which she was left out.
Presently she heard again the beat of the motor. Beginning in front of the house, it grew fainter in the distance; then silence, and at last a soft step on the stairs.
"Sophie," there was that in Diana's voice which made her sit up and listen, "Sophie, are you asleep?"
Mrs. Martens lighted the bedside candle with shaking hands. Diana came forward into the circle of light. Diana--with all of youth gone from her. Diana stripped of joy. Diana with the shimmering blue gown seeming to mock the tragedy in her face.
She came up to the bed and stood looking down at her friend.
"Listen, Sophie," she said, brokenly, "see what I've done. Anthony is engaged, Sophie. Engaged to another girl!"
* * * * *
Peter, in his basket, slept soundly all night. But Sophie slept not at all. And early in the morning she went down to her friend.
Diana had taken the room which had been her mother's. She had kept the carved canopy bed and other massive pieces, but she had changed the hangings and the wall covering from mauve to rose-color.
"You see, Sophie," she had explained one day in Berlin, "there comes a time in the life of every woman when she needs rose-color to counteract the gray of her existence. If you put blue with gray you get gray. But if you put pink with gray you get rose-color. Perhaps you didn't know that before, Sophie, but now you do. And you'll know also that when I dare wear a blue gown I am feeling positively infantile."
Diana, in n��glig��, had always made Mrs. Martens think of a rose in bloom. She had a fashion of swathing her head, cap-fashion, in wide pink ribbon, and her cr��pe kimonos always reflected the same enchanting hue.
But this morning it was a white rose which lay back on the pillows. Diana's loose brown braids hung straight down on each side of her pale face. There were shadows under her eyes.
"Don't look at me that way, Sophie," she said, sharply, as Mrs. Martens came up to the bed. "I--I'm not going into a decline--or break my heart--or----"
She broke off and said in a changed voice, "You're a dear." Then with a pitiful little laugh, "It wouldn't be so hard--but she's so young, Sophie."
"Eighteen--poor Anthony!"
"Do you think he is really unhappy, Sophie?"
The night before when she had lain in Mrs. Martens' comforting arms, she had thought only of her own misery. For a time she had been just a little sobbing child to be consoled. All her poise, all her self-restraint had gone down under the force of the overwhelming shock.
But now a wild hope sprang up in her breast. Why should two people suffer for the sake of one? And the other girl was so young--she would get over it.
Yet, remembering Anthony's face as he had left her, she had little hope.
"I wish you might have been prepared for this," he had said. "I wrote a letter, but it must have missed you. Perhaps it has been best to talk it out--that's why I came. May I still come, sometimes, Diana?"
Then her pride had risen to meet the crisis.
"As if anything could spoil our friendship, Anthony," she had told him bravely. "I want you to come--and some day you must bring--the Girl."
"You will