"It's great to view the scenery sitting down like a first-class passenger," he said, "but I feel like a loafer."
Nahnya shook her head. "You fall overboard," she said coolly. "Wait till you grow in the boat."
Ralph acknowledged the reasonableness of this. In getting in the dugout, without consulting Nahnya, he faced around the other way so that at least he could have the satisfaction of looking at her while they moved along. Nahnya made no comment. He got no glances in return from her, for her eyes were fixed undeviatingly on her course.
When the current, slyly increasing its flow, swept them around a bend and bore them headlong into a rapid, Nahnya was transfigured. Poised at the helm, straight as a young pine tree, with her flashing, resolute, confident eyes fixed ahead—eyes with the fighting look, magnificent and intimidating—cheeks flushed, lips parted, round arms wielding the paddle with deft, strong strokes, she was a glorious sight for a man's eyes.
Ralph, drinking it in, thrilled with that kind of terror of women's beauty that the bravest man may confess without shame. "What man could ever presume to master a woman like that?" was the thought.
When they fell into smooth water again, and the tension relaxed, the heroines of his boyhood presented themselves one by one for comparison; Diana, Boadicea, Joan of Arc. He rejected them all. "Nahnya is only like herself!" he thought. Aloud he cried enthusiastically: "Nahnya, you're wonderful!"
Suddenly recalled to herself, she started, blushed, looked a little foolish, and scowled at the trees on shore. "Cut it out!" she muttered.
It struck him as an exactly fitting thing for her to say.
And then the thought that this superb woman-creature was likely the property of the insensible savage boy in the bow stabbed him afresh, and poisoned all his joy. "It can't be!" he had told himself a hundred times during the morning. "She could not stoop to that!"
All morning the question had been flung back and forth in his mind like a shuttle. He watched them unceasingly, building high castles of hope upon their apparent indifference to each other, only to have them cast flat when she spoke to the boy in their own tongue, words that he could not understand. He continually cast around in his mind for some way to find out what he wanted without putting the question direct, but without success. Ralph was painfully direct. After beholding Nahnya in her glory in the rapids, he could bear the suspense no longer. Choosing a moment when the going was easy and her attention was free to stray from the river, he hazarded all on a single throw.