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“They’d likely warm your jacket, too.”
    Disgust made her shaky and sick. She remembered Hugo and Owen and the others and the things they talked about. The words were different sometimes, but they all added up to the same sum. A girl was easy, or she wasn’t easy. . . . “She was rarin’ to go, and then she froze up on me, the little bitch!” they said. . . . She remembered countless afternoons of talk, the inevitable comment on almost every girl or woman who walked by the beach. But she’d been safe; she was Joanna Bennett, who thought a lot of herself and looked at those others with the fierce intolerant scorn of her youth.
    â€œNils, he can’t say anything about me,” she said swiftly.
    His arm tightened. “That’s good. Look, kid.” His words were slow, and endlessly kind, as they always were for her. “It’s natural for you to want a man of your own. But you’re no slut, like some of ’em around here. My cousin Thea and them . . . You don’t have to do everything they do. And at least you can get you a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
    They had reached the gate now, and the circle of his arm was friendly and warm and comforting, not at all like Simon Bird’s arm. “Look, Nils,” she said with a little chuckle. “Did you ever think how funny it is? Lots of people on the Island think we go around together. You know—that sweetheart stuff.”
    â€œCrazy as hell, aren’t they?” said Nils. “Well, I guess you’ll be all right now. It’s only about three looks and a holler to the house.”
    â€œHauling tomorrow?” She leaned on the gate and looked up at him in the starlight. She saw the glimmer of his teeth when he smiled.
    â€œSure. Want to come?”
    â€œOh, yes! Golly, Nils—thanks for everything.” You were lucky, having a chum like Nils. He was so steady and unsurprised. He was so good. It made you feel warm and very rich just to see him there. But you didn’t say things like that to your chums. Joanna said again, “Thanks for everything, Nils.”
    â€œAny time,” said Nils.

5
    I N THE MORNING LIGHT , the evening before might never have happened. To Joanna, kneeling by her window, the delicately cool, bright air stroking her skin, it was like one of those dreams of vague horror that she used to have when she was small. It was something that had happened to another girl, not in this world where the day was as naive, as smiling, as blue-eyed as a baby. A drift of buttercups spilled across the meadow, each bright and shining head dancing in the wind. The Indian paintbrush blazed with new fire close to the prodigal snow of a half-million daisies. The swallows were sleek blue shadows skimming across the grass, and the more intrepid of them rose high to dart in circles around the gulls that floated over Schoolhouse Cove. The young crows shrieked from the woods.
    There were jewels everywhere. There were jewels in the sea, stretching limitlessly to the east and the south, to the Camden mountains and the faint blue line of mainland in the north and west. There was a jewel clinging brilliantly to each twig, to each blade of grass and flower in the meadow. The smoke from Uncle Nate’s chimney, far across Schoolhouse Cove, rose straight and blue. Somewhere a dog barked, an engine started up in the harbor, and from over behind Goose Cove Ledge came the drone of hauling gear and the frenzied clamor of startled gulls. The Island was up and at work.
    A whistle rose faintly and tunefully to her ears. She saw Stevie coming through the gate, carrying the milk can. He was a thin straight little boy in overalls, with a coppery skin and a black forelock. Winnie, the collie-spaniel, bounded through the tall grass like a swimmer breasting the waves, and her ears flopped merrily over her head, her tail was a gay plume. Joanna smiled and began to dress. The kitchen was