She, too, knew that spring had come. From head to foot she was all in fresh spring raiment. A lettuce-green hat tilted its shade across glowing eyes. She was drawing on lemon-colored doeskin gloves and laughing. “I thought you were going to drive right through and out again! What _were_ you thinking of so dourly, Hugh?”
He waited while she settled in beside him, knees close together, narrow patent-leather-slippered feet glittering by the accelerator, her shoulder a careful inch or so from his. “I wasn’t a bit dour. Quite the contrary. I was thinking of spring.”
Joan opened a huge patent-leather purse, as glittering as her feet, glanced to make sure of money, tickets, compact, kerchief, snapped the luxurious receptacle shut, tucked it between them on the seat, and clasped her gloved hands about her knees, ready.
“Yes? Spring’s really come, hasn’t it! And one begins to make summer plans. I’ve been flirting with the idea of Switzerland all morning, and Doctor Steiner’s colony. He wants me to spend July there. Your little friend, Brenda, may go. And Michael certainly will.”
Hugh threw in the clutch, and they slid away down the broad avenue between wide, freshly spaded flower-beds glowing with hyacinths. Hugh was thinking, “Ariel must get spring clothes too. She was still wearing her fur coat yesterday. No wonder she looked tired! Yesterday was almost as warm as today.”
Joan went on. “Your engine, Hugh, is as soundless as a gull’s wings almost, even in first and second. Oh! It’s too delicious! I can think of nothing but the sea and the mountains. I think I must fall in with Doctor Steiner’s plan. I’m dreadfully happy and excited ’cause it’s spring and I’m free to go anywhere, do anything I please!—And you, Hugh?”
She had given him his cue. She would sense either in his silence or hear in words what spring, that might take her to the other side of the world, could mean to him. Loneliness, of course.
But to-day Hugh did not seem to be realizing what spring should mean to him with Joan already planning to go away because of it. He’d missed his cue. For he was saying, “Look here, Joan. I want to talk to you about Ariel. It’s rather a strenuous existence she has with Grandam, you know. And these New York parties on top of her work might prove a bit too much. Last night, she turned up completely exhausted. Anybody could see! Poor kid! So I’ve persuaded her to break her Saturday engagement with your crowd, or to let me break it for her. I hope you don’t mind, Joan. I don’t really see how it can do her any good. If she gave up her job she might manage that sort of thing. But I think she’s right to prefer to keep the job. I like her pluck. Don’t you, really? And you don’t mind, do you, not having her along at whatever it is you’ve planned?”