“Can you swim?” called out the girl, as the little, rocking boat shot out farther from her over the glassy waves.
“No,” he answered, and that one brief word seemed to stifle and kill the beating heart in her bosom as it fell upon her ears.
Her great, dark eyes opened to their widest limit in horror too great for words.
“You cannot swim!” she gasped, faintly; then, in a fervor of frenzied terror, she called to him:
“Then come back. I do not want the lilies, indeed I do not.”
But if he heard, he did not heed her words, nor the gasping words which accompanied them.
Out over the water sped the tiny boat, with almost the swiftness of an arrow, under the measured strokes of his arms, while the girl stood on the green, mossy bank, with locked hands and beating heart, watching his every movement with terror-stricken conscience.
“What if I have sent him to his death!” she whispered, hoarsely, and in that moment the truth came to her—that this man, whose acquaintance she could count by a few, fleeting hours, was more to her than life itself. She had done as the heroine in the greatest book she had read had done—fallen in love; lost her heart to this handsome stranger at first sight.
“Oh, Mr. Moore, come back! Come back!” she called, shrilly, repeating: “I do not want the lilies; it was only a thoughtless, girlish caprice which prompted me to dare you to get them for me. Can you hear me?” And now her voice was raised shrilly in the most piteous agony.
But he never once turned back toward her, and the echo of her wild cries came back to her from over the dimpling waters and the forest trees that lay beyond.