"Oh, Guy darling, it's more than that. This is the fourth afternoon running that we've been together; and we weren't back yesterday till dinner-time."
Guy put a finger to his mouth.
"Hush! We're coming to the bend in the river that flows round the place we first met," he whispered. "Hush! if we talk about other people it will be disenchanted."
He swung the canoe under the bushes, tied it to a hawthorn bough, and declared triumphantly, as they climbed ashore up the steep bank, that here was practically a desert island. Then they went to the narrow entrance and gazed over the meadows, which in this sacred time of growing grass really were impassable as the sea.
"Not even a cow in sight," Guy commented in well-satisfied tones. "I shall be sorry when the hay is cut, and people and cattle can come here again."
"People and cattle! How naughty you are, Guy! As if they were just the same!"
"Well, practically, you know, as far as we're concerned, there isn't very much difference."
For a long while they sat by the edge of the stream in their fragrant seclusion.
"Dearest," Pauline sighed, "why can I listen to you all day, and yet whenever anybody else talks to me why do I feel as if I were only half awake?"
"Because even when you're not with me," said Guy, "you're still really with me. That's why. You see, you're still listening to me."