"That's a fact: I'll go over directly. You will like to be alone a while, Neckart, at any rate.--Come, Jane."
Neckart rose: "You are not going over to those rough fellows, Miss Swendon? There are no women there."
Jane laughed. "_I_ am a woman," with an arch little nod. "One queen-bee makes the whole hive proper, conventionally."
"Of course. But really those men are vulgar and fishy to such a degree--Nothing but a missionary spirit can take you to them?"
"On the contrary," gravely, "they are the best-bred men I know. Their talk is fuller of adventure and sincerity than any book I ever read."
"Still, stay with me. I have feelings to consider as well as Sutphen."
"Very well.--I will come over presently, father. Tell the little boys to make a fire clear enough to broil the fish for dinner." She sat down and called Bruno to her feet. There was a grave, childish simplicity in her motions which was a new study to Neckart.
"I believe," watching her keenly, "you would rather have gone. Sutphen would have been a better companion than I?"
"I don't know as yet. I have never tried you. I do know Ichabod."
"Or perhaps the truer courtesy would be to leave you alone with the sea? You were making a picture of it in your mind a while ago?"
"No," knitting her brows. "I could not do that. I know people who look at the sea or mountains or sky as so much canvas and gamboge and burnt umber and bits of effect. They are very tiresome."
"You have imagination rather than fancy, then? You hear the secret words in that everlasting moan yonder? You know what the mountains say to you at nightfall?" Neckart vaguely remembered the jargon of sentimental novels, the heroines of which always keep their heads on Nature's breast. He did not mean to chaff any woman, but he would gladly have proved this one sentimental and weak to explain his strong antipathy to her.
"No, I never thought of those things. But one grows tired in town--housekeeping, models and all of it. My work is very light, but I do not like to work at all. And here--the beach is silent and the sky blue and the sea rolls--rolls all day long: it is like coming home after one has been out on the streets."
"About as keen comprehension of Nature as the tree yonder," thought Neckart contemptuously. But, after all, the tree was warmed, and its sap ran stronger, and it grew and broadened in the sun and air; and that was more than he could say of painter or poet.