Her response came instantly: "How did that happen?"
"We made it happen."
She looked at him again. "We," of course, meant "I." Truly she had grown every beautiful way, but it was yet as wonderful as ever to stand, saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open soul to open soul, with one who could make words—words at any rate—happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether, among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this one might not some day, the right day, equal or surpass.
Again she looked away and as she looked the hovering Californian murmured to his new-found confidant:
"You can't see the glory of her in this light nohow, unless you'd seen her already in the full blaze of the cabin, or of broad day, with the light in that red hair. If you had you wouldn't need even the moonlight now. You'd only need to know she was there and you'd see her without looking. I seen her in her first long dress, jest a-learning to fly and some folks showing no more poetic vision than to call her 'almost plain.' I saw the loveliness a-coming, like daybreak in the mountains. And he saw it. I saw he saw it. And now? I tell you, sir, her brow is like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan, and her face it is the fairest—I never seen Annie Laurie, but if she's better looking or sweeter behaving—I'd rather not. Anyhow they're enough alike to be sisters. I've writ a poem on this one. Like to show—hmm? Hold on. It don't quite suit me yet but—what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe! it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant dreams."
While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the next bend. Or is she in the chute?"
"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old Antelope."
"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the Votaress saving her people that awful night she sank."
"Who told you?"
"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to us."