The Light Heart by Elswyth Thane

me as a friend, will you? I’ll do my best.”
    Phoebe put her gloved hand trustfully in his and said, “I feel better now, anyway,” and Oliver said, “Good,” and gave her fingers a quick squeeze and dropped them. Engaged, he was thinking with his closed, one-sided smile. Both of them, then. Well, that settled that. All cards on the table now. Everything understood. Better that way.
    “I like what you said about growing up,” she was saying with some diffidence. “You think it’s childish to cry over spilt milk, is that it?”
    “Foolish, at least. There’s likely to be lots more in the cow.”
    She laughed her surprised, rather belated laughter, as though she had caught the joke just in time.
    “You do know how to enjoy life, don’t you!” she said enviously.
    “I’m enjoying it very much this morning,” he replied, and the words were warm and comforting. “Perhaps I’m too easily satisfied. It’s spring, after a fashion, and the sun is coming out, I’ve got a good horse and a lovely companion—but suppose I was saying to myself, it won’t always be spring, and at the end of the summer you must rejoin the regiment, marry Maia, set off for India, or Egypt—God knows where—and you maynever see Phoebe Sprague again.” He was not looking at her now, his eyes were on the edge of the wold ahead of them where it met the pale, misty sky. “If I allowed myself to think like that I should be utterly miserable in no time,” he said, almost as though he had forgotten she was there.
    It was impossible not to take the words at their full value, impossible to discount them as a mere pretty speech—futile to throw up conventional defences of misunderstanding or indifference , even if that had been a game Phoebe knew how to play. She felt herself flooded through with a warm tide like a blush, and her hands were shaking on the reins. She spoke impulsively out of her own swift insurgent need, casting herself on his mercy for guidance in this unforseen, exciting thing that had happened to her because of him—so different, so much more compelling than anything that had ever happened because of Miles.
    “And can you teach me how not to mind—too much—before the summer ends?” she asked humbly, and his expressive face turned towards her, lit with amazement and ungovernable delight, so that she had to look away, and fixed her blurred gaze on her horse’s ears. Oliver reached for her bridle and brought the horses to a stop.
    “No, let me see,” he commanded softly. “Look at me, Phoebe.”
    She obeyed him slowly, but willingly, her lower lip a little out.
    “You feel it too, then,” he said, very low. “You would, of course, it couldn’t happen to just one of us. It began at luncheon yesterday—didn’t it?”
    “At first I thought it was only me,” she confessed. “But just now, when you said—I realized you must have noticed—something—yourself—” Her voice died away breathlessly, her eyes hung on his steady gaze, shy but not embarrassed, sweet and very candid.
    “It was rather like noticing a landslide,” he remarked at last. “And yet I tried all night to think I was imagining things. Tell me—what’s it like with you? Can you think straight? Can you sleep? Can you hear what people are saying to you, and give acoherent answer? Can you get on with your life in any way, shape or form?”
    “No,” said Phoebe, looking back at him fearlessly.
    “Nor can I. Thank you for being so honest. Let’s go on being honest, shall we? Now that it’s happened to us, what would you prefer to do about it? Stop right here, which means both of us run like hell and pretend it never was at all—or try to cope with it, get what we can out of it while it lasts, and then let it go—or smash up everything and start again, with two very bad consciences and the whole world before us? And I haven’t even the right to ask you, remember that.”
    “Let’s—cope with it,” said Phoebe, looking at