Part 1 (2/2)
He smiled. ”Not I! Do I remind you of one?”
”You are strong, and you manage a boat as though you were accustomed to the work. Also you look as if you had been at sea.”
”Rightly guessed!” he replied, still smiling; ”I certainly _have_ been at sea; I have been coasting all about your lovely land. My yacht went across to Seiland this afternoon.”
She regarded him more intently, and observed, with the critical eye of a woman, the refined taste displayed in his dress, from the very cut of his loose travelling coat, to the luxurious rug of fine fox-s.h.i.+ns, that lay so carelessly cast on the sh.o.r.e at a little distance from him. Then she gave a gesture of hauteur and half-contempt.
”You have a yacht? Oh! then you are a gentleman. You do nothing for your living?”
”Nothing, indeed!” and he shrugged his shoulders with a mingled air of weariness and self-pity, ”except one thing--I live!”
”Is that hard work?” she inquired wonderingly.
”Very.”
They were silent then, and the girl's face grew serious as she rested on her oars, and still surveyed him with a straight, candid gaze, that, though earnest and penetrating, had nothing of boldness in it. It was the look of one in whose past there were no secrets--the look of a child who is satisfied with the present and takes no thought for the future.
Few women look so after they have entered their teens. Social artifice, affectation, and the insatiate vanity that modern life encourages in the feminine nature--all these things soon do away with the pellucid clearness and steadfastness of the eye--the beautiful, true, untamed expression, which, though so rare, is, when seen infinitely more bewitching than all the bright arrows of coquetry and sparkling invitation that flash from the glances of well-bred society dames, who have taken care to educate their eyes if not their hearts. This girl was evidently not trained properly; had she been so, she would have dropped a curtain over those wide, bright windows of her soul; she would have remembered that she was alone with a strange man at midnight--at midnight, though the sun shone; she would have simpered and feigned embarra.s.sment, even if she could not feel it. As it happened, she did nothing of the kind, only her expression softened and became more wistful and earnest, and when she spoke again her voice was mellow with a suave gentleness, that had something in it of compa.s.sion.
”If you do not love life itself,” she said, ”you love the beautiful things of life, do you not? See yonder! There is what we call the meeting of night and morning. One is glad to be alive at such a moment.
Look quickly! The light soon fades.”
She pointed towards the east. Her companion gazed in that direction, and uttered an exclamation,--almost a shout,--of wonder and admiration.
Within the s.p.a.ce of the past few minutes the aspect of the heavens had completely changed. The burning scarlet and violet hues had all melted into a transparent yet brilliant shade of pale mauve,--as delicate as the inner tint of a lilac blossom,--and across this stretched two wing-shaped gossamer clouds of watery green, fringed with soft primrose.
Between these cloud-wings, as opaline in l.u.s.tre as those of a dragon-fly, the face of the sun shone like a s.h.i.+eld of polished gold, while his rays, piercing spear-like through the varied tints of emerald, brought an unearthly radiance over the landscape--a l.u.s.tre as though the moon were, in some strange way, battling with the sun for mastery over the visible universe though, looking southward, she could dimly be perceived, the ghost of herself--a poor, fainting, pallid G.o.ddess,--a peris.h.i.+ng Diana.
Bringing his glance down from the skies, the young man turned it to the face of the maiden near him, and was startled at her marvellous beauty--beauty now heightened by the effect of the changeful colors that played around her. The very boat in which she sat glittered with a bronze-like, metallic brightness as it heaved gently to and fro on the silvery green water; the midnight suns.h.i.+ne bathed the falling glory of her long hair, till each thick tress, each cl.u.s.tering curl, appeared to emit an amber spark of light. The strange, weird effect of the sky seemed to have stolen into her eyes, making them s.h.i.+ne with witch-like brilliancy,--the varied radiance flas.h.i.+ng about her brought into strong relief the pureness of her profile, drawing as with a fine pencil the outlines of her n.o.ble forehead, sweet mouth, and rounded chin. It touched the scarlet of her bodice, and brightened the quaint old silver clasps she wore at her waist and throat, till she seemed no longer an earthly being, but more like some fair wondering sprite from the legendary Norse kingdom of _Alfheim_, the ”abode of the Luminous Genii.”
She was gazing upwards,--heavenwards,--and her expression was one of rapt and almost devotional intensity. Thus she remained for some moments, motionless as the picture of an expectant angel painted by Raffaele or Correggio; then reluctantly and with a deep sigh she turned her eyes towards earth again. In so doing she met the fixed and too visibly admiring gaze of her companion. She started, and a wave of vivid color flushed her cheeks. Quickly recovering her serenity, however, she saluted him slightly, and, moving her oars in unison, was on the point of departure.
Stirred by an impulse he could not resist, he laid one hand detainingly on the rim of her boat.
”Are you going now?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrows in some little surprise and smiled.
”Going?” she repeated. ”Why, yes. I shall be late in getting home as it is.”
”Stop a moment,” he said eagerly, feeling that he could not let this beautiful creature leave him as utterly as a midsummer night's dream without some clue as to her origin and destination. ”Will you not tell me your name?”
She drew herself erect with a look of indignation.
”Sir, I do not know you. The maidens of Norway do not give their names to strangers.”
”Pardon me,” he replied, somewhat abashed. ”I mean no offense. We have watched the midnight sun together, and--and--I thought--”
He paused, feeling very foolish, and unable to conclude his sentence.
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