They drifted down with the stream, the gray bridge, spanning the river, growing more distant behind them; the wooded hills swimming up on every side to form a green cup, against which the sky stooped its lips. They floated by lazy craft, in which women lay back on cushions beneath sunshades and men with bare arms clasped about their knees watched them. Snatches of laughter reached them, to which the murmur of voices droned an accompaniment. On green lawns, beneath dreaming garden trees, little groups of brightly attired people clustered. From houseboats along the river-bank stole music, one air creeping into another as they passed, fashioning a medley--coon songs from America, Victorian ballads of sentiment, a wild scrap of Dvorak and the latest impertinence from London. Of all that they saw and heard, they alone were constant in the shifting landscape. “After four years!” she murmured. He stopped rowing and gazed at her wonderingly, repeating her words, “After four years!” Then a familiar voice leapt out at them from a sky-blue house-boat, with sky-blue curtains fluttering in the windows and a rim of scarlet geraniums running round it in boxes. The voice lent the touch of humor to their tenderness, which saves sentiment from sadness and makes it ecstatic. It sang to the twinkling tones of a mandolin, struck sharply: “Come, tickle me here; For I ain't what you thought me-- I ain't so 'igh and so 'aughty, my dear. But there's right times for lovin', And cooin' and dovin', And wrong ways of flirtin' That's woundin' and hurtin'-- I'm a lydy, d'you hear? But just under the neck, Peck ever so softly-- I allow that, my dear. Not my lips--you're too near. Come along, lovey; come along, duckie; Tickle me, tickle me here.” CHAPTER XXX--HALF IN LOVE The Faun Man looked up from his writing. Peter had been with him on _The Skylark_ for five days--five gorgeous days. He had found to his surprise that the golden woman was of the party. So far as outward appearances went, the picture-smashing incident might never have happened; Cherry conducted herself as a good comrade and the golden woman called her “dear.” They had to act as friends, since the Faun Man had taken rooms for them at the same hotel that they might chaperone each other. The men slept on board the house-boat.