“But you said—” he began.
“I said fifteen minutes,” Margaret interrupted. “Of course, you know that you must always double a woman’s time.”
“I didn’t know,” the young man confessed, smiling.
“Yes,” Margaret continued, as she knelt in the bow of the canoe. “The time estimated must always be doubled. The trouble is that some women make the time triple, or worse, with no certainty about it. They bring the sex into disrepute, and we others, who are exact, get included in the general condemnation.”
Saxe, in the stern, watched the graceful swing of the girl’s arms as they plied the paddle, the litheness of the slender body as it swayed slightly to and fro, watched the sheen of the sunlight that touched to new glories the gold of her hair, watched the wonderful curve of white, softly radiant from the pulsing blood beneath, which ran from the low neck of the sweater to lose itself within the wind-tendriled, shimmering splendor of her locks. And she, this girl so magically beautiful, so wholesomely sweet, so divinely complex, so heavenly simple, this adorable creature had come to aid him at her own loss—she, his natural enemy!
They came at last to the island, where the canoe was beached on a sandy slope. The launch was out of sight, somewhere beyond the islands, within the cove. Margaret led the way without hesitation up the steep ascent that lined the shore, and then over a boulder-strewn level toward the center of the island. Presently, the ground became uneven, with sharp rises, and gullies running between these. Within the ravines, there were small cliffs, rugged, disposed topsy-turvily. Saxe began to see the possibility of caverns within the confusion of stone.
Finally, the girl halted, and looked about her dubiously.
“I’m not quite sure,” she confessed. “There have been landmarks all the way, until just here. But I think this is the ravine—if not, it’s close by.”
She went on slowly, with roving eyes. Then, of a sudden, her expression lightened.
“Ah, I know now,” she exclaimed joyously. “Yes, it’s here—see!” While speaking, she had hastened forward, and now, as she finished, she pointed to where a clump of bushes grew against the north cliff of the ravine. Above the tops of the branches showed a rift in the stone. It was less than a foot in width, a splotch of blackness hardly more noticeable than a deeper shadow. Saxe, beholding, was filled with gratitude to his guide.