“I am stiff and it is growing late.”
“You are tired?”
“No.”
“Shall I try one more cast?”
“Yes. I will watch you.”
A kingfisher flashed, a living sapphire, before their eyes. Gabriel drew back behind the willows and walked on silently in the long grass. The girl watched him awhile, and then followed, her green skirt sweeping the golden flowers at her feet. She was as fair and perilous as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, perilous with her proud eyes and her glimmering hair.
Gabriel had seen rings swaying on the still silver of the stream. He was on his knees crawling towards the bank. Ophelia, poring over the sensations of her own heart, had drawn near with an unconscious egotism of desire. Not reasoning on the scene before her, she drew nearer still with the western sunlight beating on her face. The man by the bank had half risen from his crouching posture. A swing of the rod, a swishing of tackle, a twinging start of pain. The silver trout had escaped temptation through the flash of a woman’s arm.
Gabriel turned, dropped the rod, came to the girl with warm self-anger. A blue dun-fly specked her green sleeve; her lips were parted over her teeth; the fingers of her right hand gripped the twine. She tugged once at it, winced, and smiled in the man’s face. Gabriel fumbled for a knife and cut the line short.
“Clumsy beast that I am!”
“No,” she said, with a laugh, “better arm than cheek. There’s philosophic vanity for you.”