She waited for weekends and did nothing else. And when they came they were very beautiful, and she always brought new ideas away from them back to the campus and her room, to be selectively considered and tested against her own until the next weekend. She failed two final examinations, but did not care because she knew that she did not want to pass them. And when, in June, there were no more weekends, they went away together to a California town, very small and colorful and very close to the beaches, for the summer. They did Eric’s community work by day, and walked the warm-sanded beaches by night. Eric wrote small poems for her in the wet, white sand and she learned to memorize them very quickly, in the moonlight, before the white foam, pushed in by the inevitable sea, came up the beach to wash them away. Sometimes they lay in the quiet of the warm night, the waves coming up to their naked feet, and talked and kissed and looked up at the stars and out to where they met the distant waterline. Again he spoke of his societal obligations, and again she listened selectively to what was said. She did not want to think of society or community, at night in the dark warm wet sand, or anything beyond herself and that part of him which gave her happiness.

“We ought to get married,” he had said close to her ear one night. “We ought to do it while it’s still summer.”

She thought of the girls and their social commentaries, and had said: “Everybody thinks we’re in for it.”

“I don’t care,” Eric said. “I know what I want.”

“I wouldn’t want you to hate me later, when it hurts.”

“I can’t hate,” he said. “It’s not in me.”

“But people can put it there.”

He kissed her ear. “Everything’s changing now. In a few years nobody’ll give it a second thought.”

“It’s nice to think that.”

“But it’s true,” he said. “You’ll see. As soon as everybody over thirty-five dies, it’ll be a new society.”

“I don’t want to trap you through an idea, Eric. You could be wrong, and then you’ll hate me for it.”

Eric had never thought about being wrong himself. Only fighting what he believed to be wrong was in his conception of stewardship. “You’ll see,” he assured her. “Only people over thirty-five have this thing. If we can’t change them, we’ll just wait them out.”

“Listen,” Margot said, “please don’t make me a crusade. I just couldn’t stand being that.”

“How can you say that. I love you.”

“Just don’t.”

He had kissed her again and then they lay very still and quiet in the night and waited for the bigger waves to drive them further up onto the beach.

VIII