“Wouldn’t you rather be a stream like that,” Jim asked, “than to go plunging and leaping and bruising yourself down the rocks of a mountainside?”
She smiled, but did not answer. The picture had soothed her; it lay gently on her spirit, softening her mood.
“There’s a cat-boat,” Jim exclaimed. “Wonder if we can’t borrow it. It’ll be just a cat-boat to me, but you can turn it into your palatial steamer, if you want to. Shall we try?”
“I’d love it,” she said. “I have never sailed.”
Never sailed! Yet she had spent her whole life in sight of Lake Michigan.
“Then,” said Jim, “you’ll sail now if I have to turn pirate and steal us a craft.”
But the transaction went smoothly. The little boat was rented, the horse unharnessed and stabled; they embarked their provisions, and with a brisk sailing breeze headed out for distant, invisible Wisconsin.
Jim handled sheet and tiller; Marie half reclined at his side. And because she was happy, for the hour she seemed beautiful to him—she was beautiful. Jim felt the force of her, not exerted in futile rebellion, wasted, but to be reclaimed by a wise hand and directed to the great work which falls to the lot of all good women. He saw her superior in mind to the women he knew; quickened by ambition. He saw her as she might be, indeed as she was at the moment. Her appeal was powerful. He compared her with women he had known; she made them seem faded, colorless. He glanced at her; his glance became a scrutiny of which she was unconscious. She seemed very desirable to him. It came over him suddenly that he must have her; that she was the necessary woman. It was as if he had known it always.
It was Sudden Jim who spoke.
“Marie,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, the tremor in it, she turned, startled. “Marie,” he repeated. No other word came for a moment, but his face, his eyes, were eloquent. The color left her face, left her lips first. “Marie, won’t you be a part of that contentment? Won’t you help me to it—and let me help you to it? I want you. I—love you, Marie. I want the right to love you always—and to take care of you and make you happy. I want you to love me.”