"You were just like a figure from some church altar," he told her fervently. "Your dress was blue, and the fog rolled about you in clouds. All the same, you know, your expression wasn't exactly saintly; it was too--" "Too what?" she whispered. "Well, just what it is now," and with that he looked at her until she was obliged to avert her eyes. "I mean that your face is very innocent," he explained, "and at the same time, it is all alive with--well, with a sort of curiosity. But to-day you were Diana of the Chase with your skirts all ruffling around your feet and blowing to the side in folds. However I'm not up in mythology; all I know is, my own, you'll never succeed in fencing yourself off from me again. But don't look at me like that!" And with an indefinable glance at her as she sat, suddenly converted to sternness, he took up the oars. She observed complete silence, and for some moments all that was heard about them was the ripple of the water as it met the sides of the boat. The waves like a lover approached the boat, touching it lightly, tentatively and timidly caressing it with eager lips. But occasionally waves larger than the rest seized the skiff and upbore it as in the powerful embrace of arms, dipped and sank with it; while a sound of multiplied kisses ran over the surface of the glancing ocean, which was tremulous as a breast heaving with love. And the influence of that universal caress mounted to the air, which was like a stinging breath crossed with tears of spray; even reached the low-stooping western heavens where sailed largely great cloud masses, like huge embarrassed lovers, that never the less, with a sudden darting of colour along their edges, strange and fiery smiles, approached--melted softly and completely into one. The sea was a theatre and the play enacted on that broad expanse, in the swiftly falling twilight, for the bewilderment of that pair of human mites,--the play was Love. For Nature, the great scene shifter, who causes the mists to rise above swamps that she may bring about the love and mating of midges, is the artist incomparable when she sets out to glamour and bend to her will the least significant of these struggling, valiant creatures called men, these creatures that dare, with a law opposed to hers, to defy her. Rachel had crept to the extreme end of the skiff and when the water rose to the edge it often dashed across her knees. Her head was flung back, but for all that, she saw nothing. She was holding her emotions well in leash and the effort drew from her now and then a sigh. Where the fingers of one hand met the back of the other, for she had them tight clasped, there were white marks on the flesh. She sat before him with the impassive countenance of an image, though internally she was consumed with flames. Time passed imperceptibly, but all at once she pointed to the shore.