On an open wharf near Tenth Street they were bespelled by April. The Woolworth Tower, to the south, was an immortal shaft of ivory and gold against an unwinking blue sky, challenging the castles and cathedrals of the Old World, and with its supreme art dignifying the commerce which built and uses it. The Hudson was lustrous with sun, and a sweet wind sang from unknown Jersey hills across the river. Moored to the wharf was a coal-barge, with a tiny dwelling-cabin at whose windows white curtains fluttered. Beside the cabin was a garden tended by the bargeman's comely white-browed wife; a dozen daisies and geraniums in two starch-boxes.
Forging down the river a scarred tramp steamer, whose rusty sides the sun turned to damask rose, bobbed in the slight swell, heading for open sea, with the British flag a-flicker and men chanting as they cleared deck.
"I wish we were going off with her—maybe to Singapore or Nagasaki," Carl said, slipping his arm through hers, as they balanced on the stringpiece of the wharf, sniffing like deer at the breeze, which for a moment seemed to bear, from distant burgeoning woods, a shadowy hint of burning leaves—the perfume of spring and autumn, the eternal wander-call.
"Yes!" Ruth mused; "and moonlight in Java, and the Himalayas on the horizon, and the Vale of Cashmir."
"But I'm glad we have this. Blessed, it's a day planned for lovers like us."
"Carl!"
"Yes. Lovers. Courting. In spring. Like all lovers."
"Really, Carl, even spring doesn't quite let me forget the convenances are home waiting."
"No, we——"