The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle Read Free Book Online

the boardwalk, and then in the direction of the Ambassador, at the other end of the boardwalk from the concessions and soda fountains.
    â€œI hope you’ve been watching Courtmont this week, Elizabeth,” Kurt said. “You can learn a lot about makeup from her. And lighting. That woman knows more about lighting than most electricians. A lot of good actresses don’t know when they’re in a spot and when they’re in shadow. Courtmont manages to get all the light on her face and everybody else slightly shadowed. And she knows how to make up those big blue eyes of hers so that they look like two small individual spotlights of her own. Your eyes are—” He stopped for a moment, then asked in a tone of wondering surprise, “What color are your eyes, my Liebchen, my Elizabeth?”
    â€œGrey,” Elizabeth said.
    Kurt laughed, rather apologetically. “It’s odd how one remembers what eyes are like but doesn’t remember what color they are. You have good eyes, Elizabeth. Wide apart. And nice lashes. And nice wavy brown hair. But you should put in a rinse to make it redder.”

    Usually Elizabeth seized on any of Kurt’s suggestions like a seagull diving after a fish, but now she shook her head. “If I put in a rinse, it would look dyed. This way, what red there is is my own.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t look dyed if you had it done properly.”
    â€œI can’t afford that sort of thing, Kurt.” People with money never understand that other people don’t have it, she thought. Even Kurt, who usually seemed to understand everything. Aloud she said, “I don’t like dyed hair anyhow.”
    It was the first time she had ever disagreed with Kurt, and she felt quickly upset and unhappy.
    But Kurt’s arm tightened about her waist in an affectionate gesture, and he said softly, “It was just an idea, Liebchen. You’re perfect as you are. I’m very fond of you, funny one, did you know that?”
    Elizabeth’s heart winged with happiness as it always did when Kurt spoke to her in that gentle, loving way.
    But as to his question, she could give it no answer, because to think that Kurt Canitz was really fond of her was too exciting and too wonderful a thing to be believable. All she wanted to do was to cry out, I love you! but she just leaned against him and continued to walk beside him on the lonely boardwalk with the salty night wind pushing her hair back from her face.
    I wonder when I first began to love him? she thought, and it seemed to her that it had been from that very first moment she saw him, that April morning when he had come walking into Mr. Price’s office and she had realized at once that he was different from everybody else in the room. And then there was
the first night they went walking on the boardwalk together. They had barely been there a week and it was opening night of the season.
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    That whole evening had been a wonderful one for Elizabeth, starting with the moment when the apprentices put on their long summer evening dresses in preparation for ushering in the first audience of the summer. Elizabeth was grateful that she had been on the Ivy Chain at college and that being on Ivy meant a pastel evening dress. She had made her own, a long corn-colored dirndl skirt and a deeper yellow blouse that bared both her shoulders.
    â€œThe reason I stick to dirndls is that they’re inexpensive and easy to make,” she had confessed to Jane, “and I’m really no seamstress.”
    â€œThey look wonderful on you,” Jane said, rather wistfully, “and they make me look dumpy. Look, honey, I have a big sort of dark amber cummerbund thing that would look gorgeous with that outfit. You take it. I never wear it.”
    â€œOh, but I couldn’t—”
    â€œListen,” Jane said, rather sharply, “don’t get your back up again. It is also blessed to receive. We’re all perfectly