The latter days of July Carley made busy—­so busy that she lost her tan and appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the dragging heat and late hours.  Seldom was she without some of her friends.  She accepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to Coney Island, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were three forms of amusement not customary with her.  At Coney Island, which she visited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best time since her arrival home.  What had put her in accord with ordinary people?  The baseball games, likewise pleased her.  The running of the players and the screaming of the spectators amused and excited her.  But she hated the motion pictures with their salacious and absurd misrepresentations of life, in some cases capably acted by skillful actors, and in others a silly series of scenes featuring some doll-faced girl.

But she refused to go horseback riding in Central Park.  She refused to go to the Plaza.  And these refusals she made deliberately, without asking herself why.

On August 1st she accompanied her aunt and several friends to Lake Placid, where they established themselves at a hotel.  How welcome to Carley’s strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam of amber water!  How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air!  The change from New York’s glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulating walls, and thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush, was tremendously relieving to Carley.  She had burned the candle at both ends.  But the beauty of the hills and vales, the quiet of the forest, the sight of the stars, made it harder to forget.  She had to rest.  And when she rested she could not always converse, or read, or write.

For the most part her days held variety and pleasure.  The place was beautiful, the weather pleasant, the people congenial.  She motored over the forest roads, she canoed along the margin of the lake, she played golf and tennis.  She wore exquisite gowns to dinner and danced during the evenings.  But she seldom walked anywhere on the trails and, never alone, and she never climbed the mountains and never rode a horse.

Morrison arrived and added his attentions to those of other men.  Carley neither accepted nor repelled them.  She favored the association with married couples and older people, and rather shunned the pairing off peculiar to vacationists at summer hotels.  She had always loved to play and romp with children, but here she found herself growing to avoid them, somehow hurt by sound of pattering feet and joyous laughter.  She filled the days as best she could, and usually earned quick slumber at night.  She staked all on present occupation and the truth of flying time.

CHAPTER IX

The latter part of September Carley returned to New York.