"Hire an experienced snooper?" Johnny watched a gull. The gull was free.
Dorothy didn't answer.
"Dot, do you know what color a ceanothus petal is?''
"I . . ." She looked started. "Blue," she said.
Johnny leaned and saw the world fresh and beautiful and steady. Dorothy fidgeted.
"They'll be all right, I suppose?" she blurted. "Sure. All right now."
"Johnny, they won't. He is not of tliis world and Nan's going to be utter devotion or something impractical. Somebody will have to look after them."
'Not me," said Johnny. "No?" Dorothy was surprised.
''Well, not excessively. I've figured it out—vi^atching over people/' Johnny told her, rather harshly. "Keeping secrets to 'protect' them. Look at the whole list. George Rush protected Dick. Why? To protect himself from being expelled. Blanche protected Dick. Why? To protect herself from punishment, for disobedience and for burglarizing. Old Mrs. Bartee protected Nathaniel from being thrown out on the world. Why? For love, maybe. And that was wrong, too. All of them wrong. Because Rush wasn't innocent, Blanche wasn't innocent, Nathaniel wasn't innocent and Dick Bartee, Lord knows, wasn't innocent. Only one person protected someone rightfully. That was Emily. She protected the truly innocent—the httle baby. Everyone else should have faced the consequences of what he himself had done. OtheiAvise, it's no good. It's not even kind." "I know," said Dorothy.
"I should have given Nan the whole truth as soon as I knew it."
"Me, too," said Dorothy softly. "But we didn't. And now it isn't her fault, really, that she never learned. She . . . Johimy, it won't be easy for her for a long time."
"Wnbo says," drawled Johnny, "that things have got to be easy? That is a dream." Dorothy sighed.
"You know what's a better dream? To want the truth, have the truth and take the truth, and learn and be . . ." "Yes," said Dorothy, "that's a better dream, all right." "I want to tell you something true," said Johnny abi-uptly. "When I got my aims around you in that closet and felt your heart beating . . ." His ovsti heart stopped, for the memory.
"Bart said he thought . . ." Dorothy was a bit breathless. "He thought you wanted to fool Dick for a little while. When he told me about that blue-eyed bluff, he guessed you wanted to try another. Johnny, did it help, that Dick thought he had killed me?"
"Not much," said Johnny. "Tricks. I'm off of tricks. Dot. I want things plain. I hadn't finished a sentence." He looked at a gull. "Maybe I don't need to. Once you said that you could tell-"
She let him see, as he turned, miles deep into her blue eyes, clear and true. His breath caught.
'Tes, I can tell," said Dorothy gravely. Then, "Johnny, do you think we can possibly be happy?"
He knew what she meant. The ghost of Emily, the blood of Dick Bartee the tragedy of Nan—these memories were hovering and might always hover over the two of them when they were together.
This was going to be no romantic dream. This would not be Cloud Nine or any numbered cloud.
Here was J. Sims, just as he really was—sick and sore sad—and not much, in his own estimation. Here was also this lovely hvely giil, so real, that he could heardly breathe.
"Dotty," he said soberly, "I'll tell you the truth. I could live—although I can't imagine how—without you."
Then she was in his arms, warm and fragrant and he felt her heart beating.
Now, surely, sweetly, they were mending, their wounds were closing, they were being healed and they could tell.
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