Part 37

"Flavia, I am going away," she abruptly announced. "Mrs. Alexander has asked me to go South with Caroline and her, you know. Uncle says I may do as I like, and I am going. I can't bear it here," her full lip quivered.

Flavia turned from the window by which she had been standing, catching and crushing a fold of the drapery in her small fingers as she faced the other girl.

"You mean that you cannot bear Corrie," she retorted, in swift reproach. "You treat him--how you treat him! You hardly speak to him, you hardly look at him. Oh, you are cruel, you will not see how he suffers for one moment's fault."

Isabel grasped a chair-back, commencing to tremble.

"I can't bear to stay," she repeated hysterically. "Don't talk to me about Corrie."

"I never will again," Flavia assured, pale with extreme anger. "Yet you might remember that he loves you; a little kindness from you would help him so much. Do you know where he spent yesterday? He was out in his motor boat; out in November with a north gale blowing, alone in that speed-boat that is half under water all the time. You do not care, you have no pity."

"I----"

Flavia imposed silence with a gesture, herself quite unconscious of how overwhelming was this contrast to her usual gentleness.

"He has done wrong--you have nothing to give him but more punishment. Yes, go away, that is best. But he would have been kinder to you, Isabel."

Isabel let go of the chair, her gray eyes dilating unnaturally. Her gaze dwelling on Flavia, she slowly retreated a few steps towards the door, then suddenly turned and fled, leaving no answer.

With her going, Flavia's passion died, something like fear taking its place. That was what Corrie had felt, reflected Corrie's sister; a sweep of flame-like anger that blinded judgment, a slipping of self-mastery that loosed hand or tongue. Only, she had not wanted to hurt Isabel, that was a point she could not conceive reaching, herself.

When she had somewhat recovered, Flavia went to find her furs and outdoor apparel. She knew where Corrie had gone; she would meet him and herself break the tidings of his cousin's coming departure. He would be walking; he had not touched an automobile since he left the seat of his pink racer to rescue Gerard from beneath the crushed Mercury, and he had no patience with horses.

It was on a bleak, sandy stretch of Long Island road that she met Corrie, a solitary figure against the flat landscape as he came towards her. At sight of her little carriage and the cream-colored ponies he himself long before had taught her to drive, he stopped, his boyish face brightening warmly.

"Other Fellow," was all he said, when she leaned towards him with her unaltering love of glance and smile.

There was no need to ask where he had been.

"How is Mr. Gerard, dear?" she ventured, after he was seated beside her and they had commenced the return.

"Better."

"You go there every day to ask?"

"Every day."

"And, he----"

"He has seen me every day, even the worst. He talks about politics, the aviation meet, the motor magazines,--about everything except himself or me. It is his right arm, now, the other hurts are almost well. To-day I met the doctor, going out as I was coming in. I asked about him----"

Flavia raised her eyes to meet his, shrinking from the verdict that speech must establish beyond the refuge of doubt. Very gently he laid his hand over hers upon the reins and brought the ponies to a standstill.

"Do you remember this place, Flavia? Well, all that is over for him."

Beside them sloped away a brown, frost-seared field; in its centre still showed the outline of a baseball diamond, with the bags forgotten at the bases. Flavia's heart contracted sharply, the reins escaped her grasp. For the moment memory and vision fused; she saw the straight, slender pitcher poised with arms raised above his brown head, saw his laughing glance go questing down the field, and the swift, graceful movement that launched the ball with unerring unexpectedness. And because she could not speak without inadvertently lashing Corrie, she sat mute.

She did not know how long it was before he spoke, with the new steady seriousness so strange to meet in him.

"Where are we getting to, Other Fellow? Because we have got to get somewheres, you know; we don't stand still. Gerard will go away to his own home, soon. You and father and Isabel and I can't just sit here looking at each other, like we've been doing."

Gerard would go away, soon. That was the sentence that gripped Flavia. Go, without seeing her, without pursuing the purpose he had shown her in the fountain arbor? It seemed so impossible that the thrill that shook her was not of fear, but of startled expectancy. Yet she answered Corrie with scarcely a pause, and with all tenderness.

"Dear, Isabel will not be here, for a little while," she told him, hesitatingly. "She is going South with Mrs. Alexander and Caroline. She, she needs the change."