Dinner and a long lazy afternoon. A row of exploration about the pond’s edge, a visit to the island; a ramble through the woods;—and nightfall found the campers eating a firelight supper with the crass hunger of the unaccustomed outdoor sojourner. Then a short, yawn-punctuated chat around the camp fire, and the signal for bed.
It is one thing for a man of cities to be delightfully sleepy after his first long day in the woods. It is quite a different matter for him to be able to fall asleep on a many-projectioned bed of balsam, while a guide snores raucously on one side of him and a second man tosses in uneasy, muttering slumber on the other. After counting up to one hundred, and keeping tabs on a flock of visionary sheep as they leaped an equally mythical wall (and hoping in morbid disgust that some of them would fall and break their imaginary necks), Conover rose quietly, pulled on such garments as he had removed, groped about till he found his thick waterproof coat and stumbled out into the open. He kicked the fire’s smouldering logs into a blaze and looked at his watch. It was barely nine-thirty. He took out a cigar and prepared to sit down beside the logs and smoke himself sleepy again.
Then she came.
He was not surprised. Even before he turned his head or noticed the fall of her light feet on the mold, he somehow knew she was drawing near. He looked around to find her close behind him. Her hair was caught up loosely, and shimmered like a rust-shot aureole in the waning firelight. She wore the sweater and walking skirt of the afternoon. But her high boots had been changed for moccasins.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, clasping the hands he held out to her, “All the forest and the silences seemed calling to me. Besides, Mrs. Hawarden sleeps so,—so audibly. All at once, I felt you were out here. So I came. Is it very late?”
“No,” he answered in the same key, “Not much mor’n half past nine. Sit down here an’ I’ll get a blanket to wrap ’round you. I ought to send you back, so’s you won’t catch cold. But it’s—somehow it’s so good to have you right here by me. This time to-morrow night I’ll be glad to remember it.”
“Don’t get me any wrap,” she forbade, stretching out her hands to the blaze he was again stirring into life, “I’m warm enough. And you’d fall over something and swear and that would wake somebody. Then I’d have to go back to the stuffy tent.”
Rex, curled up asleep on the far side of the fire, lifted his head; wakened by the sibillant whispering. Seeing Desirée, he began to smite the earth resoundingly with his wagging tail.
“Hush!” whispered the girl, raising her finger in warning; as the collie’s sleepy, golden eyes blinked more and more friendly greetings and the bushy tail increased the tempo of its beats. Mistaking her gesture, Rex rose with lazy grace, stretched himself, alternately, fore and aft, collie-fashion; and picked his way daintily across the cleared space to Desirée’s side. He lay down at her feet, thrusting his cold nose affectionately into the hollow of her hand.
“What a gorgeous night!” murmured Desirée looking up at the black, star-strewn sky, “And we were going to waste it in sleep! The woods are calling. The dryads and fauns want us to come to their enchanted dell and dance with them. Shall we?”