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irrepressible giggle starting to make its way up, like a bubble, from her solar plexus. Just the same, she was nervous. She let Warren have his way about the choice of picnic site: even though the cove was tame, compared to walking out on the breakwater, it was safe because Martha hated it. Both Martha and Miles Murphy could be dangerous enemies, she said thoughtfully.
    The Coes had no enemies. They were the best-liked couple in New Leeds. Jane was a big, tawny, ruminative girl, now thirty-eight, who played the oboe and the bagpipes. She had a fresh, orangey, milkmaid’s complexion and round, curious blue eyes that kept rolling in their sockets; she liked to sit crosslegged and always looked as if she were still wearing a middy blouse and bloomers. Her maternal grandfather, a German chemist, had invented a children’s laxative, and her grandfather on the other side, also German, had done very well in the sheet-music business. Unlike the other New Leedsians, she had never had to worry about money. Though you could not tell it from the way they lived, she was said to have a capital of more than half a million very shrewdly invested by her mother’s man of business. Besides this, Warren had a tiny income that had been left him by his father’s bachelor brother, who was something in shipping in New Orleans: Jane had a multitude of cousins but Warren’s family, on both sides, was dying out; his father had died young, and his mother was an invalid.
    Warren was an only child. He was now fifty, but you would never guess it. He had an eager, boyish face, rather like a bird’s, with a thin, beaked nose and bright spots of color, high in either cheek. He had fair, thin hair, which Jane always cut for him, using professional clippers, so that he had the mazed look of a person just out of a barber’s chair. His frame was slight and thin-chested. He smiled a great deal, happily, and had a habit of raising himself on the balls of his small feet, as if he were trying to see over the heads of a crowd. This alert, expectant air was always with him. He seldom sat down, for before he came to New Leeds he had taught for nearly twenty years at a school of design and had spent his days and nights moving about from easel to easel, looking over shoulders. He was a very excitable, forward-gazing person, very moralistic and high-principled; every moment was an adventure to him. Warren loved his relationship with Jane; they told each other all their thoughts, exclaiming over the differences. Jane was indolent; he was full of ginger. Jane was a bit unscrupulous; he was an idealist. Jane was equable; he was easily cast down. But they shared an appetite for life that woke them every morning, greedy for the new day, to be divided, fairly, between them, like a big fresh apple.
    This greed for experience was their innocent vice. They did not smoke, except for Jane’s occasional denicotinized cigarette; they drank in extreme moderation, often from the same glass: “I’ll just take some of Jane’s,” Warren usually proffered, partly because he hated to waste anything and partly for the fun of sharing. They never touched real coffee. When they were alone, they ate whatever health food Jane had been reading about—yogurt, wheat germ, figs, vitamin soups made in the blender with nine raw vegetables. Yet they were not cranks; like good children, they cleaned their plates when they were out to dinner and came back for seconds. They appreciated fine cooking but thought it unfair to Jane to keep her standing over a hot stove when nature outdoors was so beautiful. They loved long walks, and Warren was a systematic nudist, though he always took pains not to give offense to the neighbors; it shocked him to see some of his friends stripping on the beach, in plain view of an old lady who sat in her second-story window with field glasses.
    They seemed utterly different from the other New Leeds people—a thing Jane often pondered on, aloud, in a dreamy reverie,