CHAPTER V.
Ah me! Even the longest and happiest day must have an ending!” sighed Vestalia.
“It is not a new thought,” replied David. “But I have never before comprehended how unwelcome it could make itself.”
They spoke to each other in soft, regretful, musing tones, through the still darkness of the clouded summer night. They had been the last to quit the Greenwich boat, on its last return to its City moorings, and they halted for a moment on the floating pier after the others had gone—the gentle undulation of the tide beneath their feet, their gaze dwelling upon the black silent expanse of the river.
In retrospect, the day had been very long indeed, and altogether happy. Its structure of delight had been reared on the simplest and most innocent of foundations. They had gone first to the Zoological Garden, which fortuitously suggested itself to Mosscrop’s mental search as an unexceptional resource. Nor did inspiration fail him there, for when the great man-eating cats had been fed, and the foul hyenas next door had yelped themselves hoarse, and the charms of natural history had otherwise begun to wane, the notable thought of the fish dinner at Greenwich rose with splendid opportuneness in his mind.
It was after this feast, while the two strolled beneath the big trees, that twilight found them out. The shadows, as they deepened among the distant shipping, and stole downward to dim the reflected whiteness of the eastern sky beyond the river, brought reverie in their train. Mosscrop found a bitter taste in his cigar, and lit another impatiently. The girl leant upon his arm with a new suggestion of dependence. They moved down to the wharf by tacit consent, before the appointed time, and, taking their seat on a bench at the end, looked absently at the water with but an occasional word. Evening closed in about them as they sat thus. Then the boat came, and they went on board, and established themselves in relative seclusion at the stern, still in almost unbroken silence.
And now the completed journey lay behind them as well. They stood close together, swaying with the slight motion of the raft upon the lapping waters, and ruminating sadly upon the fact that their day was done.
“We finish as we began—with the river,” murmured Vestalia. She trembled to his touch as she spoke.