He was immeasurably relieved at her answer.
"Let you?" she cried gratefully. "Why, I'll be ever so much obliged to you. I am sorry to be such a trouble. I don't see how I was so careless," she added in frank apology.
Roderick knew he ought to say it was no trouble, but a pleasure. But he was too shy and too happy. He succeeded only in mumbling, "Oh, not at all," or something equally vague.
He brought the canoe close to the rock and held out his hand. She stepped in very carefully, and with something the air of one venturing out on a very thin piece of ice.
"It's the first time I ever stepped into a canoe," she said a little tremulously. He steadied her with his hand, smiling a little at her graceful awkwardness. Then he showed her how to place herself in the little seat in the centre, with a cushion at her back. He did it clumsily enough for he was embarrassed and nervous in her presence. In all his years of paddling about the lake it was but the second time he had taken a young lady into his canoe, and the first one he had rescued out of the water, and this one off a lonely point of land. So he was not versed in the proper things to say to a lady when taking her for a paddle.
The canoe slipped silently out from the rock and slid along the darkening shore. Only the faintest suggestion of the sunset glow lay on the softly glimmering surface of the water. But they had gone only a few yards, when there came a new miracle to remake the scene. From behind the black bulk of the pine clad island peeped a great round harvest moon, and suddenly the whole world of land and water was painted anew in softer golden tints veiled in silver. The girl sat silent and awe-struck. Was there never to be an end to the wonders of this place? "Oh," she said in a whisper, "isn't it beautiful?"
Roderick looked, and was silent too.
Yes, it was very wonderful he thought, more wonderful to him than she dreamed. He felt as if he could paddle on forever over the shining lake with the magic colours of moon-rise and sunset meeting in the golden hair of the girl opposite him. They went on for a long time in silence. They passed into the shadow of the island with silver lances through the trees barring their path. The dewy scent of pine and cedar stole out from the dark shore. The silver light grew brighter, the whole lake was lit up with a soft white radiance.
"Have you always lived here?" she asked at last in a whisper, an unspoken fear in her voice lest a sound disturb the fair surroundings and they vanish, leaving them in a common, every day world of material things.
"Always," said Roderick in the same hushed tone, though for a different reason. "I was born on the old farm back here."