CHAPTER XVII
RIDING THE REEFS
The next afternoon Roscoe was sitting on the coping deep in thought, when Ruth rode up with her father, dismounted, and came upon him so quietly that he did not hear her. I was standing in the trees a little distance away.
She spoke to him once, but he did not seem to hear. She touched his arm.
He got to his feet.
"You were so engaged that you did not hear me," she said.
"The noise of the rapids!" he answered, after a strange pause, "and your footstep is very light."
She leaned her chin on her hand, rested against the rail of the coping, looked meditatively into the torrent below, and replied: "Is it so light?" Then after a pause: "You have not asked me how I came, who came with me, or why I am here."
"It was first necessary for me to conceive the delightful fact that you are here," he said in a dazed, and, therefore, not convincing tone.
She looked him full in the eyes. "Please do not pay me the ill compliment of a compliment," she said. "Was it the sailor who spoke then or the—or yourself? It is not like you."
"I did not mean it as a compliment," he replied. "I was thinking about critical and important things."