“I came on purpose to meet you,” she said calmly.
“Er—thank you—that is——!”
“I wanted to explain about yesterday. You see I didn’t want you to think I was just simply insane. There was—method in my madness.”
“But I didn’t think you insane,” he denied, depositing the burnt match carefully on a lily-pad and raising his gaze to hers. “I thought—that——”
“Yes, go on,” she prompted. “Tell me what you did think when you found me here in that—that thing!”
“I thought I was in Arcadia and that you were just what you said you were, a water-nymph.”
“Oh,” she murmured disappointedly; “I thought you were really going to tell me the truth.”
“I will, then. Frankly, I didn’t know what to think. You said you were Clytie, and far be it from me to question a lady’s word. I was stumped. I tried to work it out yesterday afternoon and couldn’t, and so I came back to-day in the hope that I might have the good fortune to see you again.”
“It was rather silly,” she answered. “And I ought to have run away when I saw your canoe coming. But it was so unexpected and sudden, and I was bored and—and I wondered what you would look like when I told you I was a water-nymph!” She laughed softly. “Only,” she went on in a moment, with grievance in her tones, “you didn’t look at all surprised! I might just as well have said ‘I am Mary Smith’ or—or ‘Laura Devereux!’”