Another silence, so exquisitely painful, so poignantly sweet, that David felt he might stand so for ever, watching her, leaning in all her beauty and her fragrant youth against the grim old dial, looking sometimes at him, and sometimes off to sea, with her glorious and thoughtful eyes.
“David, I got your message,” she said, suddenly, in a voice oddly compounded of amusement and daring and a sort of fear.
“I’m glad,” David answered, mechanically. And then, rousing himself, he added in surprise, “What message?”
“On the little draught of the house plans,” Gabrielle answered, serenely.
“Which plans were those, dear? The ones Jim sent to San Francisco?”
“He sent them to San Francisco too late, but they sent them on and we got them in Panama.”
“Did I send a message with them?” David asked, not remembering it.
“Scribbled on the margin of one of them,” Gabrielle nodded.
“A message—to you?” David said, in surprise.
“Well, I read it so.” The girl fell silent, and a robin with a warmly stained breast, and a cocked head, hopped nearer and nearer to them.