“Why not?” asked Willy.
“It’s—it’s a business proposition,” said Alexina. But it took a bit of courage to bring it out.
“Is it?” said he.
“Or I can’t do it, you know.”
They had reached the lake and were sitting like children on the edge of the pier. The water was ruffled, the incoming waves white-crested, and the wind was soughing a little around the boat-house behind them. He was breaking bits off a twig and flinging them out to see them drift in.
“Great country this,” he said, “that can’t produce a pebble for a fellow to fling.”
He looked off toward the shining, shadowy distance, where the moon gleamed against the mists. “You are”—then he changed the form of his question—“are you very rich?”
“Leave the very out, and, yes, I suppose I am rich,” said Alexina.
“You are so—well—yourself,” he said, “sometimes I find myself forgetting it.”
The girl swallowed once, twice, as if from effort to speak. She was looking off, too, against the far shore. “Is it a thing to have to be remembered?” then she asked.