And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle

things they don’t know. This room used to be the private chapel of the lady of the château, Flip, and that priedieu is where she used to kneel to pray.”
    “How do you know, Paul?” Flip asked.
    “My father told me. For a man who spends hours just sitting and thinking about philosophy he knows a tremendous amount about anything you can think of to ask him.”
    Flip crossed to one of the windows and looked out through a pane of blue glass onto a blue world. The sun was beginning to slip behind the mountain and she said, “I have to go now, Paul.”
    “Will you come next week?” Paul asked.
    “Yes, I could come on Saturday next week. I could come earlier in the afternoon if you’d like.”
    “I’d like it very much,” Paul said. “Do you really have to go now?”
    “I think I’d better.”
    “There are so many things I want to ask you. Do you like to ski?”
    “I don’t know how yet. But I’m going to learn this winter. Do you like it?”
    “More than anything in the world. I never can wait for the snow and they say it will be late this year. Do you like to read?”
    “I love it.”
    “I do too. Do you like the theatre?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “So do I. We seem to like a lot of the same things. Maybe that’s why I can talk to you. Usually with other people I feel strange and as though there were a wall between us, or as though we were speaking a different language, even when we’re really not. I can speak four languages, yet I can’t talk at all to most people. But you’re different. I can talk to you so easily, and this is only the third time we’ve seen each other.”
    “I know,” Flip said, looking at the mice again instead of at Paul, at the tiny pink babies and at the little grey mother with her bright, frightened eyes. “I can talk to you, too, and I can’t talk to anybody at school.”
    Paul turned away from the mice. “We’re disturbing her. She’s afraid we might take her babies. Come on. We’d better go downstairs. I don’t want you to get into trouble at your school. They’d be very unpleasant if they knew you’d been here.”
    “You seem to know a lot about girls’ schools,” Flip said.
    Paul started to lead the way back through the maze of corridors. “Institutions in general are similar,” he said loftily. Then, “You really will come on Saturday, Flip?”
    “Come hell or high water,” Flip promised, feeling very bold.
    Paul held out his hand to say good-bye and Flip took it.She felt that Paul did not realize that he was shaking hands with the most unpopular girl in the school.
     
    She walked back to school, thoughtfully.
    She had been happy while she was with Paul, and while, underneath the happiness, there was still an ache of grief, there was also an acceptance. Her mother was dead. She would always miss her; she would always feel the loss of her mother’s confidence in her value; but she knew now that the confidence must come from within herself. Even if her mother had not died, Flip would have had to stop clutching at her mother’s faith in her, and find her own.
    At the clearing at the edge of the woods she stopped to make sure no one was around, and then ran across the open space, trying not to get out of breath because she knew that if she went into the common room, still panting, her cheeks flushed, someone would notice and try to find out where she had been. She wanted nothing more than to tell someone about Paul; she had always wanted to share her happiness with the world, but she knew that if she was to see him again she had to keep him a secret.
    And he wants to see me again! she thought exultantly. He’s not frightening the way I always thought being alone with a boy would be. It was just like talking to anyone, only nicer, and he wants to see me again!
    She had seen a tapestry once, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, of a young page standing with a unicorn. The page was tall and slender with huge dark eyes and thick dark hair, and Paul reminded