“Mrs. Hawarden says my hands are disgracefully brown,” said Desirée, the happiness running back to her eyes at his rough praise. “And my face is as black as an Arab’s, I suppose.”
“It’s the prettiest between here an’ Granite, all right,” he declared stoutly. “Here, let me pull that sweater thing higher up around your throat. What a funny little kid face you’ve got, anyhow, Dey!”
He looked at her with frank delight. The girl’s head was bare; the mist clinging like frost crystals to her shimmering aura of hair. Out of a flushed, bronzed countenance glowed the wide, child-like eyes that Caleb had once declared were two sizes too big for her face—and in whose depths Caine had more poetically located “twin springs of hidden laughter.”
It was good to see her. And the man’s business cares, his social plans, his matrimonial campaign itself, faded into nothingness. He was here, by her side. That was enough. And doubly he realized how poignant had been the ache of aloneness at his heart, during every day of her absence. There was a new peace, an utter content, that enwrapped him now that he was once more beside her. He did not try to analyze the emotion. But he knew it mastered him as nothing else had ever done. He knew it; and, satisfied to look no farther ahead, he was glad.
The launch had churned clear of the dock and was beating to northward through the mist barrier. Shadowy shores slipped past them. To their left, out of the fog, loomed the boathouse of a camp. Beyond its float men and girls in shiny bathing suits were splashing about in the water. Caleb trailed his hand over the launch side. At the nip of the icy water he accorded the swimmers such a glance as he might have bestowed on the martyrs of old.
A wind danced down from the north, playfully tearing the lake vapors to silver tatters. A lance of white sunlight struck through the flying mist-reek. Out of the obscurity leaped an island; emerald green, sparkling with diamonds of moisture. Then another, and another. The mainland’s vague shores took shape and beauty. Broad reaches of water flashed azure and pale gold under the swift caress of wind and sun.
“See!” cried Desirée. “Isn’t it perfect?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is.”
“But look!” she commanded. “You haven’t once taken your eyes from my face. How can you say—?”
“What I said goes,” he answered curtly. “There’s nothin’ to take back.”