"You think quite a lot of yourself?"
"Oh, no!" She shook her head vehemently. "It isn't that at all. I think
I'm--I'm not anything I want to be. It's just that there are certain
things outside me and the way I feel about them that I wouldn't want
changed. The way I feel about the mountains and the lake. And stars. I
love them so very much. And I don't think the others really care about
them. I don't think they really see them. And it's the way I feel about
things like the mountains and the lake and stars that I wouldn't want
changed."
"You want a great deal, my little Flip," Georges Laurens said, gently
stroking Ariel's head, "when you want to be exactly like everybody else
and yet be different at the same time."
Paul reached for another chestnut and rolled lazily onto his back.
"I sympathize with you, Flip. It's horrible to be in an institution.
Couldn't you have stayed at home with your parents?"
"I wanted to," Flip said, "but Gram's in New York and right now my
father's in China, and my mother's dead. I wanted to travel around with
father but he said he was going to go to all sorts of places I couldn't
go, and I couldn't miss school anyhow." Remembering her promise to
Madame Perceval she added, "and I don't hate school nearly as much as I
used to, Paul. Truly I don't."
"What do you like about it?" Paul asked bluntly.
"Oh, lots of things," Flip said vaguely. "Well--look at all the things
you can learn at school you couldn't learn by yourself. I mean not only
dull things. Art, for instance. Madame Perceval's taught me all kinds
of things in a few months."
"Go on," Paul said.
"And skiing--Fräulein Hauser's going to teach me to ski."
"I know how to ski," Paul said.
Flip tried again. "Well, there's music. They teach us lots about music
and that's fun."
"This is the best way to learn about music," Paul said, going to the
phonograph and turning it on. "You don't have to be in school to listen
to good music."
Flip gave up.
The record on the victrola was Bach's _Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring_. It
was music that Flip knew and she sat quietly staring into the fire and
listening. It was the first time in three years that she had been able
to listen to that music. At home in New York in the Christmases of her
childhood her mother had played it and played it. The Christmas after
her mother's death Flip had found the record broken and was glad. But
now she was listening to it with a kind of peace. She looked over at
Paul and said softly, "My mother used to love that...."
But Paul did not hear. He jumped up and turned off the record before it
had played to the end and said, "Let's go for a walk."
Flip followed him outside. The evening was still and cold and there was
a hint of blue-green left in the sky. The stars were beginning to come
out. Flip looked up at the first one she saw and made a wish.--I wish
Paul may always like me. Please, God. Amen. She wished on the star and
there was a sudden panic in her mind because the Paul walking beside
her was not the Paul with whom she had spent the afternoon. His face in
the last light as she glanced at it out of the corner of her eye seemed
stern, even angry, and he seemed to be miles and miles away from her.
He had withdrawn his companionship and she searched desperately for a
way to bring him back to her.
"Paul," she hesitated, then gathered her courage and went on, "do you
remember Christmas when you were very little?"
"No," he answered harshly, "I don't remember."
She felt as though he had slapped her. Why wouldn't he remember? She
remembered those first Christmases so vividly. Was he just trying to
keep her from talking? Had she unwittingly done something to make him
angry?
She glanced at him again but his face was unrelenting and she clenched
her mittened hands tightly inside her pockets and said over and over to
herself,--please God, please God, please God....
"I don't remember!" Paul suddenly cried out and abruptly stopped his
rapid walking and wheeled about to face her. "I don't remember."
His voice was no longer harsh but he spoke with an intensity that
frightened Flip.