“Let’s get away, somewhere,” he said. “Do you mind coming with me—alone?”
“No,” she said.
There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river, side by side.
Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they embarked on Sagamore Water.
The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade, the spray floated shoreward.
V
Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water stretched away into the forest’s sombre depths, barred here and there by dusty sunbeams.
Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft swept the yellow gravel.
Knee to knee, vis-à-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation.
“I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow,” she said, looking at him.