Further down the beach they came to an Inn, where they sat on a balcony and drank tea with rice-cakes, and watched the sun sink lingeringly through bank after bank of cloud into the very ocean, taking with it suddenly the day. They went to one of the play-places on the beach, and danced and dined, and rode on childish and breath-taking roller-coasting journeys. And at midnight, still unwearied, still flooded with the joy of being alive and together, they wandered back up the shore, to its remoter haunts, past the piers gleaming with lights, into the darkness wanly illumined by a young moon that climbed up behind the ragged rocks to shoreward. “Let’s come here tomorrow night and build a bonfire,” said Rose-Ann. “And bring our supper.” They lay on the sand, still warm from the blaze of day, under the cool wind from the sea, glad to have put off the testing of their happiness another day. They went back to her apartment. “What about this alleged poet of yours, Rose-Ann?” he asked casually. “Eugene?” “I didn’t know his name....” “Well ... he doesn’t count, if that’s what you mean.” And she kissed him, as if anxious to prove herself all his. Tonight there should be no cloud on their happiness. 2 They breakfasted lazily Sunday noon at a tea-shop in Santa Monica, kept by three quaint little Englishwomen; they dawdled over their shirred eggs and toast and coffee until mid-afternoon, talking. Their table was on a porch under a stucco archway, half screened from the road by a trellis covered with roses. “Everything is too beautiful,” said Rose-Ann. “What have we done to deserve this?” “Would you like to live here—always?” he asked. “I’d like to have been a child here,” she said. “But the mid-western winter has got into my blood. I guess I want to see snow again!” “It does seem immoral,” he laughed, “—flowers in February!” “I may go away,” she said. “Soon.... But not back to Chicago.” “Why?” he asked in surprise. “This—this magazine adventure—is over.... I was working to become editor. And now they’ve offered me the position. And I don’t want it. Isn’t it funny? It just doesn’t mean anything to me.... I shall try something different....” “So shall I,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m tired of my job, too.” She smiled. “When you’ve made your fortune in the movies—” “That was all a damned lie, Rose-Ann. I haven’t the slightest idea of selling anything to the movies.” “You’ve no idea how easy it is,” she said. “Then that’s another reason for my not being interested,” he said. “I’m tired of easy things.... I lied to the managing editor to get to come out here. It was too easy. It’s all too easy.... No, I’m in earnest about it.—I came to Chicago expecting to have to fight my way. Chicago was too damned nice to me. I’ve been living in a pasteboard world ever since. Look at my job—I come and go when I please; and I can say anything I like.” “The Fortunate Youth!” she murmured.