“Why, it’s all soft and warm, just like spring,” she continued, holding out her arms and looking up at the sky. “I’ve been wishing I had time to walk along the river a piece.”
“I’ll take you,” said Mr. Opp, eagerly. “We can hear the whistle of the boat in amply sufficient time to get back. Besides, it is a hour late.”
[p121]
She hesitated. “You’re real sure you can get me back?”
“Perfectly,” he announced. “I might say in all my experience I never have yet got a lady left on a boat.”
Miss Guinevere, used to being guided, handed him her band-box, and followed him up the steep bank.
The path wound in and out among the trees, now losing itself in the woods, now coming out upon the open river. The whole world was a riot of crimson and gold, and it was warm with that soft echo of summer that brings some of its sweetness, and all of its sadness, but none of its mirth.
Mr. Opp walked beside his divinity oblivious to all else. The sunlight fell unnoticed except when it lay upon her face; the only breeze that blew from heaven was the one that sent a stray curl floating across her cheek. As Mr. Opp walked, he talked, putting forth every effort to please. His burning desire to be worthy of her led him into all manner of verbal extravagances, and the mere [p122] fact that she was taller than he caused him to indulge in more lofty and figurative language. He captured fugitive quotations, evolved strange metaphors, coined words, and poured all in a glittering heap of eloquence before her shrine.
As he talked, his companion moved heedlessly along beside him, stopping now and then to gather a spray of goldenrod, or to gaze absently at the river through some open space in the trees. For Miss Guinevere Gusty lived in a world of her own—a world of vague possibilities, of half-defined longings, and intangible dreams. Love was still an abstract sentiment, something radiant and breathless that might envelop her at any moment and bear her away to Elysium.
As she stooped to free her skirt from a detaining thorn, she pointed down the bank.
“There’s some pretty sweet-gum leaves; I wish they weren’t so far down.”