They were silent for awhile, the girl looking down with flushed cheeks. Presently she said:
“Will Bissy wonder, do you think?”
“Bissy?”
“Why you gave him gold for it—that other?”
“Ah-ha! Bissy is astute, a shrewd calculating elfin. He will not kill his goose with the golden eggs. The mine is not emptied of its possibilities for him. Trust him to be silent; and perish all scruples!”
He deprecated meeting trouble half-way; he bade her just drift and be happy. He was in one of his irresponsible moods, indolent and garrulous. Sometimes, he told her, he felt like a warm mass of animated jelly, afloat on a tropic sea, and just dreamily conscious of the sun and the soft swaying of the water. If only he could roll lazily round, and feel the contact of his lady radiate, and with her drift on for ever through the glassy silences!
“But I think there would be two sides to that,” responded Isabella very sensibly; “and only one would be turned to the sun. Picture the black abysses underneath, and what might rise up from them.”
He laughed:
“Then we will be two birds floating on tranced wings through the limitless blue.”
“And the storms, Bonbec?”