"Oh, hurry!" she cried. "I cannot wait." She was joyous, excited, and he somehow awkward.
Then they were away over the shining, moonlighted ice of the broad Delaware with that exhilaration which is caused by swift movement, the easy product of perfect physical capacity. For a time they skated quietly side by side, Schmidt, as usual, enjoying an exercise in which, says Graydon in his memoirs, the gentlemen of Philadelphia were unrivaled. Nearer the city front, on the great ice plain, were many bonfires, about which phantom figures flitted now an instant black in profile, and then lost in the unillumined spaces, while far away, opposite to the town, hundreds of skaters carrying lanterns were seen or lost to view in the quick turns of the moving figures. "Like great fireflies," said Schmidt. A few dim lights in houses and frost-caught ships and faint, moonlit outlines alone revealed the place of the city. The cries and laughter were soon lost to the three skaters, and a vast solitude received them as they passed down the river.
"Ah, the gray moonlight and the gray ice!" said Schmidt, "a Quaker night, Pearl."
"And the moon a great pearl," she cried.
"How one feels the night!" said the German. "It is as on the Sahara. Only in the loneliness of great spaces am I able to feel eternity; for space is time." He had his quick bits of talk to himself. Both young people, more vaguely aware of some sense of awe in the dim unpeopled plain, were under the charm of immense physical joy in the magic of easily won motion.
"Surely there is nothing like it," said René, happy and breathless, having only of late learned to skate, whereas Pearl had long since been well taught by the German friend.
"No," said Schmidt; "there is nothing like it, except the quick sweep of a canoe down a rapid. A false turn of the paddle, and there is death. Oh, but there is joy in the added peril! The blood of the Angels finds the marge of danger sweet."
"Not for me," said Pearl; "but we are safe here."
"I have not found your Delaware a constant friend. How is that, René?"
"What dost thou mean?" said Pearl. "Thou art fond of teasing my curiosity, and I am curious, too. Tell me, please. Oh, but thou must!"