Merry laughed outright. Her triumph was too obvious not to be enjoyed; but she quickly checked herself.
"I have been very rude," she said contritely; "but what you said so completely destroys the vision which every girl has in her heart that I couldn't resist the temptation to tease you. No, Mr. Cosden; I'm not a suffragist, and I never attended a public meeting in my life. Mother thinks I'm too young to enter into such things; but I've read a good deal, and I can't see why, in this scientific age, men and women shouldn't stand side by side at the ballot-box as well as elsewhere. For myself, I'm not quite ready for it, but I admit that it is nothing but sentiment—a holding on to a bit of old-fashioned precedent if you like—which holds me back. It seems to mar that vision I just spoke of, Mr. Cosden, even as your ideas completely destroy it."
She was in earnest now, and the girlish, mischievous attitude had completely vanished. Her grasp upon the tiller tightened, her eyes looked far ahead and Cosden knew that in this mood she would have welcomed a young typhoon—anything to struggle with, rather than the smooth lapping of the water against the sides of the boat as the light wind bore them tranquilly on toward their landing. Even to him, unaccustomed as he was to the finer sensibilities which expressed themselves in every feature of the girl's face, the surging thoughts which forced so tense a silence commanded silence in his own response. It was the closest he had ever come into a woman's inner shrine, and instinctively he respected it.
It was her own movement—a brushing back of a strand of hair which the breeze had loosened and blown across her face—which finally broke the tension, but her eyes did not drop. Still looking far ahead of her she spoke again, but the words seemed addressed more to herself than to her companion.
"I can't bear to give that vision up," she said quietly, "and yet I never expect to see it realized."
"Tell me what it is," Cosden urged as she paused. "Visions aren't exactly in my line, but perhaps you can make me see this one."
"It's silly of me; you wouldn't be interested, of course."
"But I am," he insisted. "Please go on."
"Well," the girl said consciously, "since you have confided your creed to me, I'll tell you what my vision is,—but you mustn't laugh at it for it means a great deal to me."
"I promise—cross my heart," Cosden replied.