"Have you?"

Merritt smiled. "I suppose I've wanted to tell the whole world," she said. "Why haven't I, Johanna? Why haven't we?"

"Don't you think that we do in a way?" Merritt thrust the paddle deep into the water, pulling hard on it, held the blade, pulled it short just back of the stern, turned her wrists and turned the canoe out of the end of the channel along the shore of the other lake.

a

"I think of it. But never until afterwards. When I'm with you, whatever I do comes so easily to me. I never stop to think how it looks to anyone else. When I hold door open for you, when I buy the tickets at the movies and you walk in ahead of me, when I pay a check at dinner; when I took your arm and helped you into this cande I was doing something that is right for me. To me, it's nothing to question. It's nothing to be stared at. I don't want to have to feel guilty about it."

"Do you?"

"No. Not yet. Only angry; and it makes me want to do things that ordinarily I wouldn't think of doing."

Johanna smiled at her and flicked the smooth surface of the water with her fingers, showering Merritt with tiny drops.

"Desperate things?"

"Wild things. Like stopping in the middle of the street and kissing you and passing out handbills about it. Like telling Lili and your father how much I love you and that I'm taking you away from them. That I'm sorry, I won't be able to marry you as there's a law against it and we shall just have to live in sin." And she stopped talking for a moment, the paddle resting across her knees, lightly, her hands lightly on it, because there was no tension now, no doubt, no shame, no guilt. "Like telling you how lovely you are, here at my feet. How lovely it would be to lie beside you, Johanna. Shall I confess to you that I've waited for it to grow dark? That I love the darkness around us." And she ran the canoe close beside the grassy bank until she reached the little inlet she knew was there. She stretched out her hand to Johanna and they stepped onto the clean, fresh grass and it crushed soft beneath their feet, beneath them as the sank down to it.

"May I get the blanket?" "Yes," Johanna said.

V

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