There were nights after that when I found it hard to sleep, nights in which I thought of Olaf sailing toward the hidden land, holding in his heart a hope which it was in my power to crown with realization or dash to the ground.  Yet I had Nancy’s happiness to think of, and, in a sense, Anthony’s.  It seemed almost incredible that I must carry, too, on my heart, the burden of the happiness of Olaf Thoresen.

When Anthony came back, he and Nancy were caught in a net of engagements, and I saw very little of them.  Of course they romped in now and then with their own particular crowd, and treated me, as it were, to a cross-section of modern life.  Except for two things, I should have judged that Nancy had put away all thoughts of Olaf, but these two things were significant.  She had stopped smoking, and she no longer touched her cheeks with artificial bloom.

Anthony’s amazement, when he offered her a cigarette and she refused, had in it a touch of irritation.  “But, my dear girl, why not?”

“Well, I have to think of my complexion, Tony.”

I think he knew it was not that and was puzzled.  “I never saw you looking better in my life.”

She was wearing a girdle of blue with her clear, crisp white, and her fairness was charming.  She had, indeed, the look which belongs to young Catholic girls dedicated to the Virgin who wear her colors.

It was not, however, until Anthony had been home for a week that he saw the blue cloak.  We were all on the beach—­Mimi Sears and Bob Needham and the Drakes, myself and Anthony.  Nancy was late, having a foursome to finish on the golf grounds.  She came at last, threading her way gayly through the crowd of bathers.  She was without her cap, and her hair was wound in a thick braid about her head.  I saw people turning to look at her as they had never turned to look when she had worn her shadowy gray.

“Great guns!” said a man back of me.  “What a beauty!”

A deep flush stained Anthony’s face, and I knew at once that he did not like it.  It was as if, having attuned his taste to the refinement of a Japanese print, he had been called upon to admire a Fra Angelico.  He hated the obvious, and Nancy’s loveliness at this moment was as definite as the loveliness of the sky, the sea, the moon, the stars.  Later I was to learn that Anthony’s taste was for a sophisticated Nancy, a mocking Nancy, a slim, mysterious creature, with charms which were caviar to the mob.

But Bob Needham spoke from the depths of his honest and undiscriminating soul.  “Heavens!  Nancy.  Where did you get it?”

“Get what?”

“That cloak.”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it—!  I wish Tony would run away while I tell you.”

Anthony, forcing a smile, asked, “Where did you get it, Nan?”

“It was given to me.”  She sat down on the sand and smiled at him.

Mrs. Drake, feeling the thickness and softness, exclaiming over the embroidery, said finally:  “It is a splendid thing.  Like a queen’s robe.”