She saw which boat he meant by the direction in which he flourished his walking-stick, but was not learned in distinctions of rig. The Vendetta, being under repair, did not seem to her especially lovely.
“Have you pretty cabins?” she asked childishly.
“Oh yes, they’re pretty enough; but that’s not the question. Look at her lines. She skims over the water like a gull. Ladies seem to think only what a boat looks like inside. I believe my boat is rather exceptional, from a lady’s point of view. Will you come on board and have a look at her?”
“Thanks, no; I couldn’t possibly. It will be dark before I get home as it is.”
“But it wouldn’t take you a quarter of an hour, and we could row you up the river in no time—ever so much faster than you could walk.”
Isola looked frightened at the very idea.
“Not for the world!” she said. “Tabitha would think I had gone mad. She would begin to fancy that I could never go out without over-staying the daylight, and troubling you to send me home.”
“Ah, but it is so long since you were last belated,” he said, in his low caressing voice, with a tone that was new to her and different from all other voices; “ages and ages ago—half a lifetime. There could be no harm in being just a little late this mild evening, and I would row you home—myself, under the new moon. Look at her swinging up in the grey blue there above Polruan. She looks like a fairy boat, anchored in the sky by that star hanging a fathom below her keel. I look at her, and wish—wish—wish!”
He looked up, pale in the twilight, with dark deep-set eyes, of which it was never easy to read the expression. Perhaps that inscrutable look made those sunken and by no means brilliant eyes more interesting than some much handsomer eyes—interesting with the deep interest that belongs to the unknowable.
“Good night,” said Isola. “I’m afraid that I shall be very late.”