While this desultory talk was going on, Margaret was still watching the little canoe bobbing about on the water. Geoffrey said to her: "Those rugs and cushions in the canoe look very inviting, do they not?"
Margaret nodded.
"I know what you are thinking about," he whispered. "You want to go away in the canoe, and dream over the waters and glide about from island to island and imagine yourself an Indian princess."
She nodded again brightly.
"Well, if my dress-coat will not interfere with your imagining me a 'great brave,' you might get your gloves, fan, and shawl, and we can go for a sail, and come in later on at the dance. If the coat spoils me you can think of me as John Smith, and of yourself as Pocahontas."
As Margaret nestled down into the cushions of the canoe, Geoffrey stepped a little mast that carried a handkerchief of a sail, and, getting in himself, gave a few vigorous strokes with the paddle, which sent the craft flying from under the lee of the island. As the sail filled and they skimmed away, he called out to Mrs. Dusenall that they would go and see the people at the hotels, and would meet them at the dance about nine o'clock. From the course taken by the butterfly of a boat, which was in any direction except toward the hotels, this explanatory statement appeared to be a mere transparency.
Nina's spirits sank to low ebb when she saw these two going off together.
They sailed on for some distance in open water, and then, as the sail proved unsatisfactory, Margaret took it down, and they commenced a sinuous course among small islands. The dusk of the evening had still some of the light of day in it, but the moon was already up and endeavoring to assert her power. Everybody had given up wearing hats, which had become unnecessary in such weather. As they glided about, Geoffrey sometimes faced the current with long, silent strokes that gave no idea of exertion foreign to the quiet charm of the scene, and at other times the paddle dragged lazily through the water as he sat back and allowed the canoe to drift along on the current close to the rocky islands. They floated past breezy nooks where the ferns and mosses filled the interstices between rocks and tree roots, where trees had grown up misshapenly between the rocks, under wild creeping vines that drooped from the overhanging boughs and swept the flowing water. Hardly a word had been spoken since they left the yacht. For Margaret, there was enough in the surroundings to keep her silent. She had yielded herself to the full enjoyment of the balmy air and faint evening glows, changing landscape, and sound of gurgling water. Her own appearance as seen from the other end of the canoe did not tend to spoil the view. Her happy face and graceful lines, and the full neck that tapered out of the open-throated evening dress did not seem out of harmony with anything. Reclining on one elbow against a cushioned thwart, she leaned forward and altered the course of the light bark by giving a passing rock a little push with her fan.
They were now passing a sort of natural harbor on the shore of one of the islands. It had been formed by the displacement of a huge block of granite from the side of the rock wall, and the roots and trunks of trees had roofed it in.
Geoffrey pointed it out for inspection, and they landed lower down so that they could walk back to a spot like that to which Shelley's Rosalind and Helen came.