"I'm the poorest rower in Christendom," said Bruce, taking up the oars and making a few awkward strokes.
"Never mind about rowing," said Miss Custer. "When we get out into the current let us drift: I like it just as well."
Bruce did so, resting the handles of the oars upon his knees.
Perfect silence reigned. The moon was strangely bright, making the very air silvery. Miss Custer, with the rarest tact, let the stillness alone, knowing there was power in it.
By and by Bruce murmured,
"With dreamful eyes,
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.
What a strange effect moonlight and water have upon us, Miss Custer! They seem almost to disembody us. I can hardly ever recall a single line of poetry in the daytime when the sun is shining. But moonlight brings out all the delicate images of the mind's palimpsest."
"Pray, then, go on and repeat something more," said Miss Custer in a low voice: "I like to hear you. Repeat the rest of 'Drifting.'"
Bruce complied, and then struck upon Byron, and was surprised and delighted to find that Miss Custer followed him even there. The truth was, Miss Custer had rehearsed all these things many times before with different actors. The whole plot lay before her, ending and all. Bruce was certainly hooked, and all she had to do was to draw the line carefully in. To be sure, he was an odd specimen, a sort of man she was not much acquainted with; but that made him all the more interesting, and she was conscious of her power to manage him.
At last Bruce put the boat about without consulting her, and rowed back to the landing in silence and with considerable dexterity, considering his self-depreciation as a rower. Ruth and the doctor, who had no doubt been affected by the moonlight too, stood on the bank waiting for them. They all went home together, a rather merry party, and immediately dispersed for the night.