"I don't know," hesitated the young man.
"Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you, and take you into full church fellowship."
"I never thought,"—he began.
"You never thought. Aren't you a Christian?"
"I suppose so."
"He supposes so! Have you no convictions—no professions?"
"But, Nellie, I never thought that you"—"Never thought that I—what? Do you think that I could ever be anything to a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in the covenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?"
In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeing her little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings of delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however, leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her hand on his shoulder to steady herself. "You haven't got a towel—or," she said dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, "anything to dry them on?"
But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
"If you take a bath after our fashion," he said gravely, "you must learn to dry yourself after our fashion."