I propelled my canoe forward. “I shall find the open sesame,” I boasted.
The gravity left her eyes; they grew starry with mirth. She repeated gaily:
“Go ahead!”
After all it was through sheer good luck that I found the entrance to the slight channel that led to the lake. Wanza gave me a surprised glance as I held aside the willow shoots lest the branches rake her head, as her canoe slipped through the leafy opening in the wall of high growing greenery. My blood flowed smoothly and deliciously through my veins as I answered her glance and swept my canoe along close to hers, letting the willows swing into place behind us.
Oh, the secretive charm of the weaving, ribbon-like waterway, as it glided in and out between the high willow-fringed banks of the meadows! Oh, the flowered border-ways past which the curling stream ran turbidly, oily and dark and shadow-flecked, beneath the shivering grey-green tree arcade. Oh, the perfume of the syringa, the pipe of mating birds, the bee droning that made the air sensuous with sound. We were borne along silkenly. We scarcely spoke. We drifted thus for a time, and then the channel, gradually widening, conveyed us through leafy growths and over-arching green to the lake, snug in its frame of cedars.
Ten minutes later I stood on the crumbling steps of the old cabin and looked up at Wanza, where she stood, leaning against the door frame, a waving curtain of woodbine casting delicate shadows on her face. Glancing down and meeting my eyes she smiled.
“Shall I knock?” she whispered.
I nodded.
But her knock elicited no response.
“I reckon she’s gone off into the woods sketching. Old Lundquist says she sketches a lot, and rides, and shoots at marks.”