"What are the signs?"
"I'm beginning to notice the scenery. I'm grateful to the sun."
Her eyes fell suddenly on the clean-carved features opposite; the dark head and the pale ivory of the face seemed alone of all things in the responsive world to refuse to wear the livery of light.
"Oh, I forgot," she said, "you don't like sunsets any more than you like autumn. Here's the mooring-place."
He stopped his long, steady stroke, and paddled the boat under the overhanging trees.
"On the contrary," he said, making fast, and looking the while through the branches to the conflagration in the west—"on the contrary, I've changed, too—'growing old,' perhaps, like you." He smiled and sat down, his eyes on the slow-sinking sun. "These, and scenes like them, are the conditions that reconcile me."
"Reconcile! They lift me up so high that I am dizzy."
She closed her eyes an instant, and then opened them with a fluttering smile. They seemed to have forgotten there had been any thought of going ashore.
"It is so splendid and yet so calm," he said, in a low voice. "It sets me free from the burden and heat of the day."