The girl's face flushed, and she drew herself from his embrace. "I hate it, Dick," she cried passionately, "I loathe it more and more every day. Nobody can be happy leading a life she was never meant to lead. You know that yourself. And every word I've told you about Bradfield's is God's own truth. What was I when they started me going there? Fifteen years old. Nothing but a baby, Dick. I swear I never knew what it all meant. And now I've met you. Oh, Dick, if only you'd marry me, and let us have a little home somewhere, I'd be so happy. I'd make you the best wife in the world. I'd see to it—" She broke off quickly, with a laugh mirthless, almost of self-contempt; then added, in a very different tone, "but there's no use in saying all this. No man that ever lived can know for a minute what real love—or what a real home—means to a woman. We might as well forget it, I suppose, and go on as we are."
Gordon's face had seemed imperceptibly to harden as she spoke, but his tone, as he answered her, was kindness itself, as one might try to soothe a too insistent child. "I do know," he said, "and I think you're right about it; entirely so. And you know how much I love you, Rose. Just let us get this one thing out of the way, and I give you my sacred word of honor I'll get out of this sort of thing for good, and we'll buy the finest little home in the state, and settle down to farming, or anything else you want. Or we'll go around the world in a steam yacht, if we hit things right. Just which you'd rather. But we can't quit the thing now. It looks too good. After we pull it off, I promise you anything in the world in return, and I shall be very proud of my wife."
He rose quickly, and then, as if to forestall a reply, added with an entire change of manner. "Well, we mustn't get too serious over things, Rose. You were the one that didn't want our day spoiled. So we might as well get down to the point while daylight lasts."
Reluctantly enough the girl rose, with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling of having once more been put off from a definite decision on the unwelcome plan. Gordon's mood, on the contrary, was cheerfulness itself. Taking down his favorite little sixteen-bore from the rack, he snapped it open, ran his eye lovingly through the glistening barrels, tested the safety-catch, and caught up a box of shells from the table. "Come on," he cried, with boyish enthusiasm, "ducks for supper, unless I've forgotten how to shoot."
Leisurely enough, in all the glory of the crisp autumn air just tempered by the pleasant warmth of the mellow, waning sunlight, they made their way down towards the point. Gordon, in a mood entirely different from any the girl had ever seen him display, eager as a boy set free from school, kept constantly calling her attention to one thing and another as they strolled along. Here he pointed out the hollow in the rocks where he had lain all through the great northeast gale of two years before, when the frightened wildfowl, storm driven, low sweeping to the southward, had passed over his head all day long in countless flocks; there he showed her the little cove where he had stalked the Canada geese, and, nearing the point, he made her shudder as he pointed to the treacherous quicksand beyond the clump of pines where, in reckless pursuit of a wounded duck, he had come within an ace of losing his life.
Twenty minutes later found them in readiness, safely hidden in the gunning box sunk level with the ground on the pebbly point of land which stretched far out to the westward of the island. Before them, the little flock of wooden decoys, moored in the lee of the point, nodded and dipped gaily to the rising breeze. The girl's eyes were bright with excitement. "Will the ducks really come, Dick?" she whispered.
For answer Gordon pulled out his watch for the twentieth time; then nodded reassuringly. "Of course they will," he answered. "In fact, it's pretty near—there, look! There they come now!"
The girl peered through the screen of bushes that fringed the box. Sure enough, off to the southward, a flock of ducks was flying swiftly towards them. A moment more, and they swerved farther to the west. She heard Gordon swear softly under his breath, and strangled a hysterical desire to laugh. Then all at once the birds caught sight of the decoys. Just for an instant they seemed to hang motionless against the sky; then, with set wings, came on straight for the blind. The girl felt her heart leap with excitement; for, all in the same breath, she saw the flock wheel quickly, and Gordon rise to his knees. The little sixteen-bore cracked spitefully once—twice—and two of the flock, doubled up in mid-air as if struck by lightning, fell stone dead among the decoys, the others, towering high into the air, made off far to the westward and safety.
Gordon, obeying the wild-fowler's first instinct, swiftly slipped in fresh shells, then turned to his companion, his eyes bright with the triumph of the hunter, his whole bearing alert, eager, confident.
"Well," he queried briefly, "what do you think?—Look out, there they come again!"