So the afternoon wore away, the two girls laughing gaily as Marie made her first bungling attempts to drive; but later, Marie was aglow with exultation and Eveley with deep pride, because the little foreigner showed real aptitude for handling the car.
Then in a lovely quiet part of the beach a little beyond La Jolla, they had an early supper and drove home, Eveley at the wheel, singing love songs, Marie humming softly with her.
"This is almost like sweethearting, isn't it?" asked Eveley turning to look into the dark eyes fixed adoringly upon her. "Next to Nolan you satisfy me more than anything else in the world. But don't tell Nolan. He is jealous of you,--he thinks I like you better than I do him."
"You say you love me, Eveley. But do you? Is it the kind of love that can understand and sympathize and forgive--yes, and keep on loving even when--things are wrong?"
"Nothing could change my feeling for you, Marie," said Eveley positively.
"But if things were wrong?" came the insistent query.
"Well, I am no angel myself," answered Eveley, laughing again. "If you are a naughty girl, I shall say, 'I will forgive you if you will forgive me,' and there you are." She stopped again, to laugh. "But I can't think of any wrong you could do, Marie. You just naturally do not associate with wrong things."
"And you will always remember, won't you, what you have said about love of one's country? That it excuses and glorifies everything in the world?"
Eveley had made an arrangement to call for Nolan at the office at eight, as they were going to Kitty's for a late supper with her and Arnold Bender, so she kissed Marie good night when they reached home, and said:
"Will you be lonesome without your big sister, and boss?"
"I think I shall go down and watch the dark shadows in your beautiful canyon," said Marie, clinging to Eveley's hand, and looking deeply into her eyes.
"Aren't you afraid down there at night?" wondered Eveley. "I have lived on top of the canyon all my life, and we played hide-and-seek there when we were children, and I love it,--and yet when night comes, I do not even go so far as the rose pergola unless Nolan is there to hold my hand and shoo away the ghosts and things."
"That is our difference. You are afraid of the world and the night, I am afraid only of men and women. I have lived alone, and have had wide dark gardens to wander in. They have never harmed me. Only men have injured me, and my family. So I love to slip down into the soft fragrant darkness of the canyon and sit on the big stones or on the velvet grass, and see my future in the shadows."