Black Diamond Read Online Free Page A

find someone else.
    Jean took her letter home and read it. She cried over it. Everything was going wrong: he was changing. If she could see him and try to talk to him, she wouldn’t know what to say. His letter almost sounded as if he didn’t love her any more. But that couldn’t be true.
    Her mother made an excuse to the school, to keep Jean at home for a while. She thought her daughter needed time to think. Besides, Jean was looking so unhappy that her classmates might start to ask her questions; or, she might just decide, out of a need to feel comforted, to talk to someone herself. Then, later, if shehad to be sent away, everyone would know why. That wouldn’t do. And William was there at school, too. Although he wouldn’t be able to see Jean without cutting classes, he was there. He might wait around for her in the morning, or later in the afternoon.
    At the same time, William’s mother asked her husband to arrange for their son to take a break from school. She wanted to make sure that William and Jean didn’t get a chance to plan anything on their own. She made the first suggestion herself: that William might like a change of scene for a short while, to get things clear in his mind; how about a trip somewhere nice for a couple of weeks? Nassau, perhaps; with his Uncle Bertram. William said no. He couldn’t leave now. As soon as the time-limit was up, he’d get together with Jean. He already wished he hadn’t given his word.
    He couldn’t bear the thought that Jean had lost faith in him. He broke his promise to his parents and went over to her house at night. He stood under her window, where the light was out. He threw small stones up at the panes. If he’d had a long, black cloak, he’d have felt safely disguised: covered by darkness, the lover’s friend. On the other hand, it would have made throwing the stones even more difficult. It was impossible to hit anything in the dark. He might break the glass if he wasn’t careful. He began to get mad enough to risk it. Her light went on. Then other lights came on too, one near her window and another downstairs ; her parents had heard. He retreated. Maybe she hadn’t even realized he’d been there.
    He looked for her at school. He asked one of the girls in her class: where was she? ‘She’s sick,’ the girl told him. But it wasn’t anything serious, she said. Just a bad cold.
    He stopped playing his records so often. He couldn’t concentrate on them. The most beautiful parts upset him; and everything in between made him impatient. He wrote a letter to Jean, though he knew she wouldn’t be able to go get it till she was better. He worried about her. She shouldn’t be sick if she was carrying a child. He put his letter in the urn and took out the one that was waiting there for him.
    His father had a long talk with him about money and compensation, college and law school. William was so distracted he could barely understand what was being said to him. The letter he had just read, and which he believed to be from Jean, told him in plain terms how little she thought of his conduct, said there were others who wouldn’t have treated her so badly, talked about his petty-mindedness on the subject of money, sneered at his mother’s fur coat, claimed she could sue him, and complained that he’d talked her into keeping the baby: now she was stuck with it while he was as free as a bird.
    His mother was just in time to intercept his desperate answer. In its place she put a letter containing a key to a box at the post office. The letter said that William was afraid he might be followed or sent away, so it was safer to use the post office.
    From then on, it was easy to deceive the young couple without danger. William protested when he was sent to the Caribbean, but he gave in; the fight was going out of him. He too had been given a key, to a post office box with a different number. His mother was therefore able to make her exchanges without fear that a letter would