It had been a shock to meet Mrs. Grey. She was the woman who surveyed Joy so critically the night of the dance. A tall, large woman, with independent demeanor, marcelled white hair and snapping eyes still almost as blue as Grant’s. She was gracious, but far from cordial. Very little appeared to escape the scrutiny of those eyes, and she made Joy feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Joy remembered what Packy had said: “Mother’s the Gorgon of the beach;” she decided that Packy had great descriptive powers. Mrs. Grey inspired the “what-have-I-done-anyway” feeling in one. Mr. Grey was only a shade more approachable. He seemed to consider Joy Betty’s age, to be talked to as such at convenient moments, and ignored as such most of the time. Immediately upon arriving, Joy had had to dress for dinner, which was an absurdly formal meal for a beach house, and then after dinner the whole family had gone for a moonlight sail. She had no moment alone with Grant, and both were silent most of the evening, acutely conscious of each other’s presence, while Betty chattered and Mr. and Mrs. Grey admired the light effects of the moon on the water, and spoke of art and science and other impersonally interesting subjects to which none of the three young people listened. Betty came in while Joy was undressing, her eyes dancing with excitement. “Joy—mother thinks Grant’s crazy about you—I heard her tell father. Do you think so? It would be so screaming! He never gets that way!” “I think so? Why, Betty——” “Well—can’t you always tell when a man’s crazy about you? I can!” Joy laughed hysterically. “Maybe I haven’t had as much experience as you, Betty,” she suggested. After Betty had gone, something happened that terrified her. For no concrete reason she burst into tears, and the more she cried, the more hysterical she became at the thought that she was crying with no apparent reason. Of course, she was very much excited. And her nerves were pretty raw, and she had not had the usual “prescription” with which to deaden them. But it couldn’t be because she had no recourse to alcohol that she felt this way. That was the way only awful people got, and after they had been drinking for years and years and years! She finally fell into a tear-tinted slumber, from which she awoke barely in time for breakfast. And now she and Grant found themselves miraculously left alone. Betty had gone to play tennis with some friends, and to Joy’s stupefaction, Mr. and Mrs. Grey had motored up to town together. And so the two sat on the piazza, still wrapped in an anticipatory silence. They watched the sailboat out of sight, then Grant turned to her. “I say—let’s get away from everything. Let’s take the roadster and some lunch and go way off into the country—will you?”