"I used to do all those things, Tom," she said in answer to my question.
"Used to?" I laughed. "Why, it's only five years ago I was hearing that
you were the best little lady on skis and skates at the West-Highlands."
Her eyelids quivered at the word.
"That year--yes," she said and averted her face.
"You mean--" I had to prod, there was no other way about it--"that you
only stayed--one year?"
She nodded.
"My Freshman year prep school."
"And then--?"
"I was needed here."
"Your father--?"
"Yes,--he needed me."
"There was Grega," I insisted. "She was the man of the family."
"She's married, you know."
I recalled having heard of an unsatisfactory marriage. So she had
escaped!
"And Martie?"
"Working at a store in town."
A dull rage charred at the inner fibres of my being. Here was Lisbeth,
the most delicate and responsible of them all, with, I supposed, much of
her mother's early gentleness and beauty, interred in this--. I did not
like to dwell on it. I switched back to skating.
"Come now. One does not forget these things at twenty or twenty-one."
She smiled at me ever so faintly, a smile that sent the winter chill of
that arid spot scurrying into my veins.
"One grows old fast--in the country," was all she said.
I thought of the flying figures that I had met in Norway and Sweden.
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