“Would you, Mr. Dan?” she said, with her head on one side, her lips tantalizingly set.
“I certainly do! Why are you so happy, all at once?”
“Because,” she cried, “because I want to crowd a whole lifetime into a day! Look out!”
Before he could reply, she had sprung down into his arms, almost upsetting him with the shock of her descent. She lay her face close to his, panting and flushed.
“Because I want to be happy for a whole lifetime!” she said and flung her arms about him. The next moment, she had slipped from him and taken refuge along the shore, leaping lightly from rock to rock.
A little later, as he waited her return, she came back quite sober and demure.
“When you make up your mind to go,” she said, looking at him intently, “do it quite suddenly, and don’t—don’t tell me until just before—just a few hours before.”
His mood, too, had turned to seriousness. He drew her to a seat beside him.
“It’s queer how your mind changes,” he said earnestly. “I thought, once, I wanted to shake the dust of the city forever—run off, be a hermit up in the top of a mountain, on an island. I hated men and their ways, their jealousies, and their estimates—and, now, I feel as though I’d like to go back, astound them just for once, and then come back here forever.” He stopped, looked at her, and saw the smile on her lips. “What’s that mean—you don’t believe me?”