"Have I shown signs of discontent, then? I assure you I have never been so ... so content to wait and hope. It is the most delightful holiday from the world I have ever had.... Sometime perhaps we shall look back upon it as the wide dividing line between the old world and the new ... and between the old life and the new."
"A line is black as a rule."
"It may be light," she said, and waved her hand expressively towards the shimmering golden spear which the setting sun sent quivering over the water right up to their feet, as they stood watching it on the beach.
"If we could only walk on it!" she said softly, as the red disc swelled and sank and disappeared amid a glory of tender lucent greens and blues and glowing orange, with a line of crimson fire on the edge of every hovering cloud, and a heavenful of crimson flakes and splashes smouldering slowly into gray above their heads.
"It points the road, but we cannot take it," he said quietly, and they turned and went back to the house.
There were times when she thought he was about to tell her all that was in his heart concerning her. She could see it in his face and eyes and restless manner. And she was ready to respond.
There were times when it was almost more than he could do to keep it all in. He believed she knew. He hardly doubted her response.
But he said to himself, with set jaw and a firmer grip of his manhood,—"She has known me just four months. She is here helpless in my hands. I may not press her unduly, for she might feel that she could hardly say me nay. Her very helplessness must make me the more careful and considerate."
And more than once, when the desire of his heart was leaping to his lips, he jumped up abruptly and went out into the night and strode away along the beach. And there he would pace to and fro under the quiet stars, with the black waves swirling up the shore in long slow gleams of shimmering silver, till the peace of it all passed into his blood, and presently he would go quietly in again, with face and heart toned down to reasonableness.
And when he went out so, The Girl would smile to herself at times, as one who understood. And again, at times the smile would slowly fade and she would sit thoughtful. But, if she wondered somewhat, and found him beyond her complete understanding, she liked him none the less for his restraint.