She nodded and smiled. "Are you in earnest now?" she said, looking with real pleasure into the comely, honest young face.
"I am, I'll swear!" he exclaimed, forgetting that nothing had yet been spoken to be earnest about. "What I think I say, and what I say I mean!"
"I wish—no—I wonder, whether I can believe you," she answered very softly, and again the black eyes seemed to pierce right through his jersey to his heart.
Meanwhile their boat shot merrily over the dead water, urged by her oarsman's skilled and vigorous strokes. Jin watched with critical approval the play of his muscular shoulders, the ease and freedom of his movements, the strength, symmetry, and youthful vitality of the man.
"Do you like poetry?" she asked, after a minute's silence.
"Poetry?" repeated Frank doubtfully. "I don't mind it," but qualified the admission by adding, "glees, and songs, and that."
She was rather thinking aloud than speaking to her companion, while she continued:
"I always admire that description of the Scandinavian warrior's accomplishments: there is something so simple about it, and so manly:
'These arts are mine, to wield the steel,
To curb the warlike horse;
To swim the lake, or skate on heel,
To urge my rapid course;
To draw the bow, to fling the spear,
To brush with oar the main:
All these are mine, and shall I bear
A Danish maid's disclaim?'
I wonder, for my part, that the Danish maid could resist him."