Arm in arm we walked along the beach. He leaned toward me, I leaned with gentle heaviness on him—delightful reciprocity—eloquent silence. A soft breeze blew up from the ocean, and kissed us both with refreshing softness.
"Ah!" said the noble man by my side, "this is delicious."
"Deliriously so," I murmured.
"You feel the revivifying effect?" says he.
"Exquisitely," says I, leaning a little more confidingly on his stalwart arm.
He bent his stately head and looked down into my eyes. Sisters, the thrill of that glance shook my delicate frame as bumble-bees set a full-blown rose to trembling when they swarm in its heart.
"Shall we go down to the sands?" says he; "the incoming tide is dashing them with coolness."
I understood the delicate meaning conveyed in these words. Nothing could be more exquisitely suggestive. The tide—what was that but his own noble self? The sands—pure, white, untrodden—in my whole life I never heard anything more typical.
"If you desire it," I said.
"If I desire it. Ah! Miss Frost, it is for you to say."