However abrupt Cosden's action may have appeared to Miss Stevens or to Huntington, in his own mind he believed himself to have selected the psychological moment for which he had patiently waited. It was true that he had seen comparatively little of Merry Thatcher, but the time had been well spent in preparation for the grand event. Now, particularly since Huntington had spoken as he did, Cosden was eager to put his new-found knowledge to the test, and to disprove his friend's contention.
It was a business axiom with Cosden that an order must be half sold before the salesman approached the prospective buyer. "People don't buy anything these days," he hammered into his sales-manager; "they have to be sold." And Cosden was a man who practised what he preached. The frankly-admitted lack of familiarity on his part with the particular market in which he proposed to trade was offset, he believed, by the expert coaching he had received from Miss Stevens; and this should have prepared him for any emergency. After all, were not the principles the same the world over? Somewhere, back in the hazy, academic past when Latin had been compulsory, he remembered that a certain gentleman whose name he could not then recall had plunged in medias res. He remembered distinctly how much this act had won his admiration; now he proposed to emulate his illustrious predecessor.
Even granting that Cosden's self-analysis was correct to the extent that he possessed no romance in his make-up, the present surroundings were such as to suggest the "psychological moment" even to the most obtuse. The sloop, after running before the wind, was skilfully guided in and out among the little islands and past the beautiful shores of Boaz and Somerset by a hand on the tiller to which sailing was evidently second-nature. The girl rested against the gunwale, her eye alert, her face lighted by a smile of quiet contentment, her white, lithe figure brightly contrasted against the varying background of blue water and the green of the islands as they were left behind.
"Where did you learn to handle a boat?" Cosden asked her, interrupting the silence which she seemed content to accept.
"Oh, there's nothing to it here," she answered. "I wonder if they have a breeze like this all the time in Bermuda? It seems to be ready-made for the visitors. But I think it would become monotonous, don't you? I like something to work against."
"You have evidently sailed a boat before."
"I'm on the water a good deal every summer. Father gave me a knockabout two years ago, and I've had lots of fun in her. It isn't always as simple on Narragansett Bay as it appears to be here."
"You seem to be pretty good at anything you undertake."
"Oh, no!" Merry laughed deprecatingly. "I play at everything, and perhaps that is why I am not particularly good at anything. Phil says I have more courage than judgment."