"Do you know
Sometimes when we sit silent, and the air
Breathes gently on us from the orange trees,
It seems that with the whisper of a word
Our souls must shrink, yet poorer, more apart.
Is it not so?
Do you know the answer?" he asked, never once taking away his eyes.
She raised hers and gave it with equal effect:
"Yes, dearest, it is true.
Speech is but broken light upon the depth
Of the unspoken: even your loved words
Float in the larger meaning of your voice
As something dimmer."
There was nothing audacious in her manner of repeating it—no coquettish reference, in voice or glance, to him. She threw into her eyes an expression of complete absorption in the spirit and story of the poem, and appeared to be far away with Don Silva and Fedalina.
Her seriousness and evident intensity of feeling were a surprise to him. He had simply been trying her with a careless stroke, but he seemed to strike true flint. "I could have sworn," he thought to himself, "that she was making fun of Ebling's proposition to read to her to-day when she said one could stand hearing a poem a good many times." And he actually went on repeating passage after passage, while she sat with her hands folded and her eyes fixed dreamily, drinking it in like distant music sounding all the way from the Spanish shores.
They were both so absorbed—not in the poem, but in thoughts that floated under the poem and circled right around themselves—that they did not hear the dipping of the oars as the doctor rowed back to shore in the white moonlight—not softened now, as it had been a while ago, by the mellow tints in the west. "Hallo!" he called. "Come down now and embark."
"Shall we?" asked Bruce in a voice so low that it seemed almost tender.
She answered by getting up, and he took the burnous off the log and folded it about her shoulders. It gave her a conscious thrill.
They sauntered down, and Bruce gave her his hand to make the descent of the bank. Ruth sprang up like a gazelle while the doctor held the boat to shore, and then pushed it off when the occupants were seated.