Tonight she’d be sleeping at the King Arthur! Tomorrow night Lollie would be sleeping with her at the King Arthur! She hummed deep in her throat as she packed. Nothing gave Stella the blue doldrums like this month of Belcher’s Beach. Nothing gave her the spring-song feeling like release from it.

This year Belcher’s Beach hadn’t been quite so bad as usual, though. At least it ought not to have been. Ed Munn had done his best to brighten it up. Funny, though, Stella would be about as glad to get away from Ed as from the boarding-house. What ailed her? Ed had been ever so generous. Every single Saturday since Laurel had been away, and one Sunday, he had planned some diverting form of entertainment. It must have cost him a pretty penny! Stella was filled with remorse that she couldn’t work up any real excitement over Ed. He was paying for “all wool,” and deserved it, not the imitation stuff she gave him. It was all pretense with her when she returned his various little signs and signals. How pitiful to be so old one isn’t even tempted to flirt any more! How amazing to be so crazy about your own child that being crazy about a man loses all interest and excitement in comparison.

Sometimes, looking straight into Ed Munn’s little red hippopotamus eyes, trying her utmost to pay for his expensive entertainment in the harmless coin that he liked best, the vision of Laurel would appear back there in the dark cavern behind her eyes, down there in the mysterious cave where her heart beat, like a sudden shaft of light. And the shaft of light would seem to be pointed like a sword, and pierce Stella. Her eyes would become suffused with sudden tears, and tenderness. Dear dear Lollie, with her big gray eyes and her dark hair, and sharp-pointed, little-girl shoulders breaking through the hair as it fell to her waist, over her slim white body when she slipped off her nightgown in the morning. Dear precious little Lollie! In a little while they would be together again! What a zigzagging thrill of joy the thought gave Stella! Good Lord, how she worshipped the kid!

2

ONCE, WHEN STELLA’S eyes had become suddenly soft with the thought of Laurel, Ed Munn had mistaken the cause of her emotion, and grasped hold of her hand, of her arm, of as much of her as he could reach across the small table that divided them; and that sort of mouth-watery look which always turned Stella’s pleasure in a man’s attentions to disgust—if he persisted in it—came into his eyes.