"Better lo'ed ye cannot be—
Will ye no come back to me?"
"I don't know whether you feel flattered, but I've an idea that Kitty and Celia would go through fire for you; and Drayton seems to share their confidence," Carroll went on in his most matter-of-fact tone.
"Celia mended my jacket," Vane replied. "I got a month's work as a result of it." Then he began to shake the mainsail loose. "I believe we both went rather far in our talk to-night; but we have got to find the spruce!"
"So you have said already. Hadn't you better heave the boom up with the topping lift?"
They got the mainsail onto her, broke out the anchor and set the jib; and as the boat slipped away before a freshening breeze Vane sat at the helm while Carroll stood on the foredeck, coiling up the gear. The moon was higher now; the broad sail gleamed a silvery gray; the ripples, which were getting bigger, flashed and sparkled as they streamed back from the bows; and the lights of the city dropped fast astern. Vane was conscious of a keen exhilaration. He had started on a new adventure. He was going back to the bush; and he knew that, no matter how his life might change, the wilderness would always call to him. In spite of this, however, he was, as he had said, conscious of an unusual responsibility. Hitherto he had fought for what he could get, for himself; but now Kitty's future partly depended on his efforts, and his success would be of vast importance to Celia.
He had a very friendly feeling toward both the girls. Indeed, all the women he had met of late had attracted him, in different ways. It was hard to believe that any of them possessed unlovable qualities, though there was not one among them to compare with Evelyn. Whatever he liked most in the others—intelligence, beauty, tenderness, courage—reminded him of her. Kitty, he thought, belonged to the hearth; she personified gentleness and solace; it would be her part to diffuse cheerful comfort in the home. Jessy would make an ambitious man's companion; a clever counselor, who would urge him forward if he lagged. Celia he had not placed yet; but Evelyn stood apart from all.
She appealed less to his senses and intellect than she did to a sublimated something in the depths of his nature; and it somehow seemed fitting that her image should materialize before his mental vision as the sloop drove along under the cloudless night sky while the moonlight poured down glamour on the shining water. Evelyn harmonized with such things as these.
It was true that she had repulsed him; but that, he felt, was what he deserved for entering into an alliance against her with her venial father. He was glad now that he had acquiesced in her dismissal of him, since to have stood firm and broken her to his will would have brought disaster upon both of them. He felt that she had not wholly escaped him, after all; by and by he would go back and seek her favor by different means. Then she might, perhaps, forgive him and listen.
The breeze came down fresher as they drove out through the Narrows. Carroll had gone below; and, brushing his thoughts aside, Vane busied himself hauling in some of the mainsheet, while the water splashed more loudly beneath the bows. The great black firs rolled by in somber masses over his port hand, and presently the last of the lights were blotted out. He was alone, flitting swiftly and smoothly across the glittering sea.