Gabriel colored with a curious spontaneity that was particularly boyish. The girl stood above him like some golden child peering deep-eyed from the green umbrage of romance. Her left hand was hooked in the unfastened collar of her blouse. Her shapely throat showed to its ivory base betwixt the golden curtaining of her hair. “My ribbon,” she explained, with no lessening of her unmeditated stateliness. “I have dropped it in the water. You will give it me.” A sudden memory swept out from the shadows of days past. Gabriel had seen that face, that cloud of hair, before. He remembered as in a forsaken dream, the blue sea and yellow sand, the black cliffs crescenting the still lagoon. A great silence seemed to fall within his heart as of a forest awed by the full moon. A band of light blue silk floated amid the green weeds. Gabriel reached for it, pressed out the water with his fingers, stood up in the shallow boat, and hesitated. The girl did not move from her grassy dais under the willow. Her shadow fell athwart the water. When Gabriel looked at her, her eyes were not on the ribbon but upon his face. The coincidence decided him. He took the near scull from the swivel, poled in, stepped into the bow as the stem brushed the bank, took the painter, gripped a tuft of coarse grass, and scrambled ashore. He twisted the rope round the straggling root of a willow and stood up. “Thank you.” The ribbon passed between them; their fingers touched. It was mere mesmerism, nothing more. Gabriel felt stolid. “I am afraid the color will run,” he remarked. “Will it?” “I am not an authority.” She looked at him with a certain critical candor, and said nothing. The man colored, though he considered himself a metaphysician. She had a number of pins in a kerchief on the grass, and without more ado she began calmly to bind her hair. The man could see that it was damp and lustreless, not yet reburnished by the sun. The girl had been bathing in the Mallan. The idea inspired him. It was so mediæval—nay, classic. “Do not let me waste your time.” “I am not in a hurry,” he answered. “You want to talk to me.” “I?” “You do not go.” “Why should I?” There was a curious and superb simplicity about her that confounded custom. Gabriel had a glib tongue on most occasions. For the nonce he discovered gaucherie in his constitution. “You are fond of the river?” said the girl, smoothing the blue ribbon between her fingers. “I am fond of being alone.” “So am I.” “Do you mean that for a hint?” “I am always alone. What should I hint at? I dislike obscurities.” “I was only sensitive for your sake,” said the man, with a smile. “That is chivalry, is it not?” “Perhaps.” “You may talk to me—if you like.” Gabriel considered her with an elemental sense of awe. Her manner was so essentially natural that he could imagine no flaw in her modesty. He had had abundant experience of coquettes. The girl did not appeal to him as such, rather as a Diana or a Belphœbe.