"Risk my life! What bosh! There was no risk; and bad as I am, and heartless as I've grown, I don't think—I don't think I'd walk away, and leave any poor wretch to die. Yes, Charley, if the night in the snow came over again, I'd do now as I did then."
"I don't believe it was a kindness after all," Charley responds. "I have a presentiment that a day will come, Dithy, when I'll hate you. I shouldn't have suffered much if you had let me freeze to death. And I've a strong prescience (is that the word) that I'll fall in love with you some day, and be jilted, and undergo untold torture, and hate you with a perfect frenzy. It will be a very fatiguing experience, but I feel in my bones that it is to be."
"Indeed! A Saul among the prophets. I shall not be surprised, however; it is my usual fate to be hated. And now, as we seem to have drifted into disagreeable and personal sort of talk, suppose we change the subject? There is a dory yonder; if your indolent sultanship can bear the labor of steering, I'll give you a last row across the bay."
They take the dory and glide away. Charley lies back, his hat pulled over his eyes, smoking a cigar and steering. She has the oars, the red sunlight is on her face. Edith defies tan and sunburn. She looks at lazy Charley, and sings as she pulls, a saucy smile of defiance on her lips:
"It was on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charley came to our town,
The young Chevalier.
And Charley he's my darling,
My darling, my darling;
And Charley he's my darling,
The young Chevalier!"
What Charley answers is not on record. Perhaps the aged millionnaire, who is to be the future happy possessor of Miss Darrell's charms, would not care to hear it. They drift on—they are together—they ask no more. The rosy after-glow of the sunset fades out, the night comes white with stars, the faint spring wind sighs over the bay, and both are silent. "And," says Charley's inner consciousness, "if this be not falling in love, I wonder what is?"
They linger yet longer. It is the last night, and romantically enough, for so worldly and cynical a pair, they watch the faint little April moon rise. Edith looks over her left shoulder at it, and says something under her breath.
"What invocation are you murmuring there?" Charley asks, half asleep.
"I was wishing. I always wish when I see the new moon."
"For a rich husband of course, Edie!" He sits up suddenly. "There's the baronet! Suppose you go for him."