The two in the boat were no longer young. They had never been lovers, but they seemed to understand each other like man and wife.
"I am old in knowledge of the world—my life has ground away any charm I might have once possessed. For her sake I hope she will refuse."
She perceived he was at the end of his confidence, and she began speaking. "I promised you a story once," she began, "and I'm going to tell it now, and then we'll return to Rose."
She spoke in a low voice, with a little catching of the breath peculiar to her when deeply moved. It made her voice pulse out like the flow of heavy wine. She faced him in the shadow, but he knew she was not looking at him at all. Just how she began he didn't quite hear—perhaps she was a little incoherent.
"O those days when I was seventeen!" she went on. "Everything was magical. Every moonlit night thrilled me with its possibilities. I remember how the boys used to serenade me, and then—I was a mediæval maiden at my barred window, and they were disguised knights seeking me in strange lands by their songs.
"You know what I mean. I tingled with the immense joy of it! They sang there in the moonlight, and I tip-toed to the window and peeped out and listened and listened with pictures and pictures tumbling in and out of my head.
"Of course it was only the inherited feminine rising up in me, as you would say—but it was beautiful. It just glorified that village street, making it the narrow way in a Spanish city."
There was silence again. Mason softly said: "Bend your head once more."
When the boat swung around and the faint moon and the lights of the town shifted, Isabel went on.
"One of the boys who came on those midnight serenadings became my hero—remember, I was only seventeen and he was twenty! We used to meet on the street—and oh! how it shook me. My heart fluttered so I could not speak, and at first I had to run past him. After a time I got composed enough to speak to him"—