Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, holding it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more in white, with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood above him, slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he thought, so ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into the blue. Then he bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was descending toward him. He stepped skilfully after her into the craft, and they drifted silently over the surface of the stream. A thrust of the paddle, in a swirl of white bubbles, turned them about, and they advanced steadily against the sliding current.
The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots of emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from the surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the light, dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, formed a sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that sank into the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, and floating voices, worlds removed.
Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them which he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the muscles of his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown skin.
“You are preposterously strong,” she approved. His elation, however, collapsed at the condition following. “But strength is simply brutality until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in history.” Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? “I hated school,” he told her briefly; “I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd rather paddle about--with _you_.”
“But you have read deep in the book of nature,” she reassured him; “only a very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child,” she added obliquely, “appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you, really.” That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe with a vicious rush against the reflections. “A dear child,” she added, without materially increasing his pleasure.
“Words are rot!” he exploded suddenly; “they can't say any of the important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what I feel--here,” he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest; “it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream goes to your head. You see,” he ended moodily, “all rot.”