On the Eve of the Regatta.
"'Why dost thou look so pale, my love?'
'I hear the raven, not the dove,
And for the marriage peal, a knell.'"
"A year to-morrow since our wedding day."
He lounged opposite to her in a Canadian canoe, now talking, now soliloquising. Her eyes were closed, the fine pallor of her face, the steely lights of her dusky hair showed contrastingly against cushions of amber silk which propped her head. Grey was the background and green—grey with falling gauzes of twilight, green with luxuriance of leafage in its emerald prime.
They had paddled to Shiplake at set of sun, starting from their house-boat, moored in Henley Reach, to return through the shady backwater, which coiled like a slumberous silver snake through the heart of a mossy lane. Here they lingered under a languishing tree—a very Narcissus pining over its own image in the water, and shedding subtle resinous odours of gum and sap upon the mellow air—determined to enjoy Nature in mood of most infinite peace. Time passed unheeded, and silence, the euphonious silence of dual solitude, was only broken by the casual twang of lute strings, or the sudden enunciation of a half-modelled thought.
"A year to-morrow since our wedding day." His voice thrilled with love and tenderness, its tone caressed her ears, though her eyes remained closed.
"You have been happy, dearest?" he said, leaning forward and clasping one of her warm, white hands.
"Very happy."
"And had all you anticipated?"