The Swing of the Pendulum by Adriana Spadoni

In March, before the actual building of the tenements began, Jean and Gregory went away for a week-end. They had decided on the spur of the moment and taken the train like two truant children. Their plan was to get off wherever it looked attractive and stop at the first farmhouse that would take them in.

The train was a popular express and crowded, so they had to stand until the first stop was reached. Then Jean got a seat and Gregory went into the smoker. With her elbow on the windowsill and her chin in her hand, Jean gazed into the fleeing fields and was glad that Gregory was not there. It was almost too much, the deep hollows still snow-filled, the bare earth of the upper stretches, the faint green of swelling buds, and the two days before them. No duties to intervene, no appointments to keep. It was their first interlude of almost perfect freedom. But there were going to be many more in the summer ahead.

The train had made two stops. There were plenty of seats now. Jean looked up and saw Gregory coming towards her. For a moment she had a mixed feeling of complete possession and at the same time of personal isolation. He was hers, so completely, so inevitably hers, and yet this was the first time they had gone away together, stolen a little piece of life for their own. It was a diminutive honeymoon, but she couldn't say that to him. As she moved over and made room for him beside her, she realized how little they knew of each other's daily habits, their methods of doing personal things, and yet the way Gregory dropped into the place she made for him, gave her the feeling of having been married to him for a long time. She wondered what he was thinking.

But evidently Gregory was concerned with no such complicated analysis, for he turned to her presently:

"No place has hit the mark yet?"

"I don't believe I've been looking. I've just been soaking."

"Let's toss. Heads, the next; tails, the one after."

It was heads. Jean settled in her seat. Gregory looked at her and smiled. The smile deepened. He could not help but think of Margaret. Whichever way it had fallen, she would have suggested throwing again. The second station "might be so much better."

"You're a brick."

"Perfectly true, but why at this particular moment?"

"The explanation's much too subtle for your feminine mind."

"Because I didn't suggest tossing again?"

"Well, I'll be darned! How did you guess that?"

"You're a brick," Jean grinned. "As dense, every bit."

They got off at the next station, to the astonishment of the solitary native waiting for the down train, and struck across the fields. When they came to a forked road they stopped.

"We'll take turns at these decisions. You first."

"North."

They walked a mile between rickety fences that seemed to go on forever. Gregory looked out of the corner of his eye and Jean laughed.

"Did you do it on purpose?"

"If there isn't a break before that big maple down there, we'll call that a turn."