The geologist's face expressed polite regret. Olivia was busied with her hat-pins.
"But Miss Lane may go," continued her aunt. "You might take Dr. Allan over in the canoe, Olivia. That would save time."
The girl nodded, outwardly demure, inwardly dancing toward that bright, wave-thrown shell. "Very well," she said, "if Mr. Allan will trust himself again to the Water-Witch."
"Either of us could swim ashore with the Water-Witch in our teeth," laughed the geologist. "Come ahead!"
They started down the steep, shadowy path to the lake, the two tall, lithe figures swaying away from each other, toward each other, as they wound in and out among the trees.
Miss Rodman felt a trifle uncomfortable. She had not been altogether honest when Olivia asked her if Mr. Allan knew about her eyes. In fact she realized that she had been rather dishonest. She had indeed told the geologist—what he might have guessed for himself—that Miss Lane's eyes gave her serious trouble, and that she had been forbidden to use them. But she had not told him that Olivia was going blind. It was obvious that he liked the girl, and Miss Rodman shrank from letting the tragic shadow of Olivia's future darken these summer months unnecessarily. She recognized instinctively that the geologist's attitude toward her ward might be altered if he were conscious of the coming catastrophe. She wanted—yes, she owned to herself that she wanted—to have Elbridge Allan so deeply in love with Olivia that even if the worst came true he would but love her the better for her blindness. But to tell him prematurely might have spoiled everything. So reasoned Miss Rodman, Ph.D.
Yet, as she stood watching the disappearing pair, she was conscious of a certain irritation. If only he had not come singing through the woods at just the moment when she was about to explain to Olivia that she had not told him the worst! For she felt sure, now, that she would have explained, if they had not been interrupted. Well, she would confess to Olivia after supper! And Miss Rodman gathered up the Journal of Folklore and the other reviews, and sauntered back to the hotel. Ethics, after all, had been only her minor subject when she took her doctor's degree; she felt strongest in ethnology.
Meanwhile old Felix, at the boat-house, sponged out the tiny birch canoe, and scowled as Allan stepped carelessly into the bow with his big hob-nailed shoes. Miss Lane tucked up the cuffs of her shirt-waist to keep them from the drip of the paddle, and Allan pocketed her sleeve-buttons. Then old Felix pushed them off. He had rented boats there for thirty years, ever since those first grand seasons of the Morraway Hotel, when the Concord coaches ran, and before the railroad had gone up the other valley, and left the Morraway region to a mild decay. Thirty years; but he had never seen a girl whom he fancied as much as Olivia Lane. He had pushed so many couples off from the old wharf in his time, and never a finer pair than this, yet he liked Olivia better alone. He did not know why he disliked the geologist, except that Allan had broken an oar in June and had forgotten to pay for it.
The pair in the Water-Witch grew rather silent, as the canoe crept over the deep, mountain-shadowed water. Allan smoked his pipe vigorously, his eyes upon Miss Lane; she seemed wholly occupied with her paddling. As they neared the shore he warned her once or twice when the canoe grazed the sharp edges of protruding basalt; but each time she avoided them with what appeared to him extraordinary skill. In reality she could not see them, and thought he understood.
She gave him her hand as she stepped ashore, and was conscious that he retained it a moment longer than mere courtesy demanded. He kept close to her side as they breasted the steep mountain-path. Whenever they stopped to rest, each could hear the other's breathing. Now and then, at a rock-strewn rise, he placed his fingers beneath her elbow, to steady her. He had never done it before.