hurry," she said.

And when Harry hurried, as he did then, though with a curious
misgiving, there were immediate results. Before Joan had chosen a hat,
and for once it was difficult to make a choice, she heard his whistle
and from the window of her bedroom saw him seated, hatless and sunburnt
to the roots of his fair hair, in his low-lying two-seater.

It was, at his pace, a short run eastward over sandy roads, lined with
stunted oaks and thick undergrowth of poison ivy, scrub and ferns;
characteristic Long Island country with here a group of small untidy
shacks and there a farm and outhouses with stone walls and scrap heaps,
clothes drying on a line, chickens on the ceaseless hunt and a line of
geese prowling aimlessly, easily set acackle,--a primitive
end-of-everywhere sort of country just there, with sometimes a mile of
half burned trees, whether done for a purpose or by accident it would
be difficult to say. At any rate, no one seemed to care. It all had the
look of No Man's Land,--unreclaimed and unreclaimable.

For a little while nothing was said. Out of a clear sky the sun beat
down upon the car and the brown sand of the narrow road. Many times the
boy shot sidelong glances at the silent girl beside him, burning to ask
questions about this husband who was never mentioned and who appeared
to him to be something of a myth and a mystery. He didn't love Joan,
because it had been mutually agreed that he shouldn't. But he held her
in the sort of devoted affection which, when it exists between a boy
and a girl, is very good and rare and even beautiful and puts them
close to the angels.

Presently, catching one of these deeply concerned glances, she put her
little shoulder against his shoulder in a sisterly way. "Go on, then,
Harry," she said. "Ask me about it. I know you want to know."

And he did. Somehow he felt that he ought to know, that he had the
right. After all he had stopped himself from loving her at her urgent
request, and their friendship was the best thing that he had ever
known. And he began with, "When did you do it?"

"Away back in history," she said, "or so it seems. It's really only a
few months."

"A few months! But you can hardly have been with him any time."

"I have never really been with him," she said. She wanted him to know
everything. Now that the wound was open again and Martin in possession
of her once more, she felt that she must talk about it all to some one,
and who could be bett