“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders with a touch of defiance. “I’m not clever; I can’t argue.” Then, her face clearing as suddenly as it had clouded, “I can’t think why you like me, Peter.”
He laughed gladly. “And I can’t tell you, Cherry. It’s as though I’d waited for you always, without knowing for whom I was waiting. I was a kind of winged thrush in a golden cage; but you’ve opened the door, now you’ve come.” His explanation wasn’t sufficient. She snuggled her chin against the back of her hand and watched him seriously, as though she suspected him of hiding something. “But what is it that you like most about me?”
He tried to discover; he dug back into his own sensations. What was it that he liked most about her? For the life of him he couldn’t put it into language. Then he thought he might find out by examining the white face, with the red lips and tragic eyes, of the girl-woman who had asked the question. What an uncanny faculty she had for stillness! A sunbeam, falling from the leaves above, crept up her slender throat and nestled in her hair.
He shook his head. “It’s just you, Cherry. Your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way you try to be sad. It’s just you and your sweetness, Cherry. I think if I didn’t love you so much I could say it better.”
She stood up. “You poor boy, you’ve said it well enough. I wish I could feel like that.—And now we should be going.” They had stepped outside the arbor; they halted at the sound of voices. Coming round the bend was a scratch eight, the oars striking the water raggedly. The men were joking and laughing; the cox, a pipe hanging from his mouth, was urging them to spurt with humorous insults. Having landed, they tumbled into their sweaters and came strolling through the garden. They were discussing the previous night in careless voices.
“Did you hear about Hardcastle?—When he isn’t in training he’s always like that. Ugh! At six o’clock a hero—by midnight a swine you wouldn’t care to touch.”
The voices passed out of earshot.
Cherry turned to Peter, “And I let him touch me. I’d have known by instinct if I’d been nice. Oh, Peter, you mustn’t love me.”
When he attempted to kiss her she refused to allow it, saying, “I’m not your sort.”
Paddling back between flowering banks, where trees cast deep shadows and birds sang full-throatedly, she again became tender. “Life’s just a yesterday, Peter—a continual bidding good-bye and coming back from pleasures.”