"A few days will be as much as is good for me," he told himself with a sigh. "In the meantime hard work and short commons are considerably more appropriate, but I shall win the right to all these things some day, if my strength holds out."
His forehead wrinkled, his eyes contracted, and he stared straight before him, seeing neither the luminous green of the maples nor the whispering cedars, but far off in the misty future a golden possibility, which, if well worth winning, must be painfully earned. His reverie was broken suddenly.
"Are your thoughts very serious this morning, Mr. Thurston?" a clear voice inquired, and the most alluring of the visions he had conjured up stood before him, losing nothing by the translation into material flesh. Helen Savine had halted under the cedar. In soft clinging draperies of white and cream, she was a charming reality.
"I'm afraid they were," Geoffrey answered, and Helen laughed musically.
"One would fancy that you took life too much in earnest," she said. "It is fortunately impossible either to work or to pile up money forever, and a holiday is good for everybody. I am going down to White Rock Cove to see if my marine garden is as beautiful as it used to be. Would you care to inspect it and carry this basket for me?"
Thurston showed his pleasure almost too openly. They chatted lightly on many subjects as they walked together, knee-deep, at times, among scarlet wine-berries, and the delicate green and ebony of maidenhair fern. The scents and essence of summer hung heavy in the air. Shafts of golden sunlight, piercing the somber canopy of the forest isles, touched, and, it seemed to Geoffrey, etherealized, his companion. The completeness of his enjoyment troubled the man, and presently he lapsed into silence. All this appeared too good, too pleasant, he feared, to last.
"Do you know that you have not answered my last question, nor spoken a word for the last ten minutes?" inquired Helen with a smile, at length. "Have these woods no charm for you, or are you regretting the cigarbox beneath the cedar?"
Geoffrey turned towards her, and there was a momentary flash in his eyes as he answered:
"You must forgive me. Keen enjoyment often blunts the edge of speech, and I was wishing that this walk through the cool, green stillness might last forever."
Afraid that he might have said too much, he ceased speaking abruptly, and then, after the fashion of one unskilled in tricks of speech, proceeded to remedy one blunder by committing another.