“I’m glad you told your mother. You know how fine I think both General and Captain are.” Hal fought back the hurt look that threatened to invade his face. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles stood out whitely against the sun-tanned brown of his hands.
Marjorie caught a glimpse of the unhappiness which sprang straight from her old comrade’s sore heart and into his eyes.
“There; I’ve hurt you, Hal! Truly I never meant to!” she exclaimed in quick contrition.
“Never mind me.” Hal made a gesture of self-depreciation. “It isn’t your fault because you can’t find it in your heart to love me.” He forced a smile, proudly trying to conceal his own desolation of spirit.
Her eyes remorsefully fixed on him the smile did not deceive Marjorie. Hal’s tensity of feature informed her of the weight of the blow she had just dealt him.
“Please, please, Hal, forgive me!” she begged with a sudden excess of pained humility.
“Forgive you? For what?” Hal bent a fond questioning glance on Marjorie’s troubled face.
“For—for—not loving you,” she faltered. “It hurts me dreadfully to know that I must be the one to make you unhappy. Forgive me for seeming to be so hard and unsympathetic about love. I’ve never thought of it for myself. It has always seemed vague and far away; like something not a part of my life. I know the love between Connie and Laurie is wonderful. I can appreciate their devotion to each other. I have the greatest impersonal reverence for love and lovers. But for me life means endeavor and the glory of achievement.”
The voice of ambitious, inspirited youth sang in her tones, half appealing though they were. Came an embarrassed stillness between them. Hal’s face, strong, even stern in its self-repression was turned partly away from her. The bleakness of his suffering young soul peered forth from his deep blue eyes as he stared steadily across the dimpling sun-touched waves.
“Nothing matters in life but love. To love and to be loved in return,” he said slowly, but with a kind of fatalistic decision. “You’ll love someone, someday, even though you can’t love me.” The shadow on Marjorie’s face deepened as she listened. It was almost as though in a flash of second sight Hal were telling her a fortune she did not care to hear. “When love truly comes to you, then you’ll understand what you can’t understand now,” he ended.