Crystal’s mind, working with its normal rapidity, invented, faced, and passed over the fact that he must have been one of the musicians.  She said aloud: 

“I think I ought to tell you that I’m not much of a believer in barriers—­between sensible people who want friendship.”

“Friendship!” exclaimed Ben, as if that were the last thing he had come out on a lovely summer afternoon to discuss.

“There aren’t any real barriers any more,” Crystal continued.  “Differences of position, and religion, and all those things don’t seem to matter now.  Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t have paid any attention to the little family disagreement if they had lived to-day.”

“In the case of Romeo and Juliet, if I remember correctly,” said Ben, “it was not exactly a question of friendship.”

She colored deeply, but he refused to modify his statement, for, after all, it was correct.  “But difference of opinion is an obstacle,” he went on.  “I have seen husbands and wives parted by differences of opinion in the late war.  And as far as I’m concerned there’s a war on now—­a different war, and I came here to try to prevent my brother marrying into an enemy influence—­”

“Good Heavens!” cried Crystal.  “You are Ben Moreton!  Why didn’t I see it sooner?  I’m Crystal Cord,” and, lifting up her chin, she laughed.

That she could laugh as the gulf opened between them seemed to him terrible.  He turned his head away.

She stopped laughing.  “You don’t think it’s amusing?” (He shook his head.) “That we’re relations-in-law, when we thought it was all so unknown and romantic?  No wonder I felt at home with you, when I’ve read so many of your letters to David—­such nice letters, too—­and I subscribe to your paper, and read every word of the editorials.  And to think that you would not lunch with me to-day, when my father asked you.”

“To think that it was you I was being asked to lunch with, and didn’t know it!”

“Well, you dine with us to-morrow,” she answered, stating a simple fact.

“Crystal,” he said, and put his hand on hers as if this would help him through his long explanation; but the continuity of his thought was destroyed and his spirit wounded by her immediately withdrawing it; and then—­so exactly does the spring of love resemble the uncertain glory of an April day—­he was rendered perfectly happy again by perceiving that her action was due to the publicity of their position and not to repugnance to the caress.

Fortunately he was a man not without invention, and so when a few minutes later she suggested opening the tea basket, he insisted on moving to a more retired spot on the plea that the teakettle would burn better out of the wind; and Crystal, who must have known that Tomes never gave her a teakettle, but made the tea at home and put it in a thermos bottle, at once agreed to the suggestion.

They moved back across the road, where irregular rocks sheltered small plots of grass and wild flowers, and here, instead of an Arcadian duet, they had, most unsuitably, their first quarrel.