The next thing Madge was aware of was Harry paddling with all his might for the sh.o.r.e.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Going to get out of this confounded thing," he replied.

When they reached the dock he got out, helped her out and tied the canoe with great care. Then he gathered her to him and kissed her several times with great firmness and precision.

"You really are quite a nice young woman," he remarked; "even if you did propose to me."

"Harold Wimbourne! I never!"

"You said, 'Well, Harry.' I should like to know what that is if it isn't a proposal."

They turned and started up the steps toward the house. Madge seemed to require a good deal of helping up those steps. When they reached the top she swung toward him with a laugh.

"What is it now?" he asked.

"Nothing ... only that it should have happened in a canoe. You, of all people!"

They walked slowly across the tennis court and sat down in one of the chairs scattered along its western side. Here they remained for a long time in conversation typical of people in their position, punctuated by long and interesting silences.

"Suppose you tell me all about it," suggested Harry.

"Well, now that it's all done with, I suppose I was merely trying to be on the safe side, all along. I know, at least, that I had rather a miserable time after you left. All the spring. Then I came up here and it seemed to get worse, somehow. It was early in June, and everything was very strange and desolate and cold, and I cried through the entire first night, without stopping a moment!"

"Yes," said Harry thoughtfully, "I should think you might have gathered from that that all was not quite as it should be."

"Yes. Well, next morning I decided I couldn't let that sort of thing go on. So I took hold of myself and determined never to discuss the subject with myself, at all. And I really succeeded pretty well, considering.

Whenever the idea of you occurred to me in spite of myself, I immediately went and did something else very hard. I've been a perfect angel in the house ever since then, and I don't mind saying it was rather brave of me!"

"You really knew then, months ago? Beyond all doubt or question?"

"I shouldn't wonder."

"Then why in the world didn't you telegraph me?"

"As if I would!" exclaimed Miss Elliston with an indignant sniff.

"That was the arrangement, you know."

"Oh, good gracious, hear the man! What a coa.r.s.e, masculine mind you have, my ownest! You call yourself an interpreter of human character, but what do you really know of the maiden of bashful twenty-six?

Nothing!"

"Well, well, my dear," said Harry easily, "have it your own way. I daresay it all turned out much better so. I was able to do up the Spanish churches thoroughly, and I had a lovely time in England. Just fancy, of all the hundreds of people I met there I can't think of a single one, from beginning to end, who said I had a coa.r.s.e masculine mind."

"Brute," murmured Miss Elliston, apparently to Harry's back collar b.u.t.ton.

"I suppose," she observed, jumping up a little later, "that you were really right in the beginning. That first evening, you know."

"Oh, I'm quite sure of it. How?"

"When you said I couldn't talk that way to you without being in love with you. I expect I really was, though the time hadn't come for admitting it, even to myself. In fact, I was so pa.s.sionately in love with you that I couldn't bear to talk about it or even think about it, for fear of some mistake. If I kept it all to myself, you see, no harm could ever have been done."

"How sane," murmured Harry. "How incontrovertibly logical."

"Yes. You see," explained Miss Elliston primly, "no girl--no really nice girl, that is, can ever bring herself to face the question of whether she is in love with a man until he has declared himself."

"Consequently, it's every girl's--every nice girl's--business to bring him to the point as soon as possible. Any one could see that."

"And for that very reason she must keep him off the business just as long as she can. When you realize that, you see exactly why I acted as I did that night and why I worked like a Trojan to keep you from proposing. I failed, of course, at last--I hadn't had much experience.

I've improved since...." She wriggled uncomfortably. "You acted rather beautifully that night, I will say for you. You made it almost easy."

"Hm. You seemed perfectly sure that night, though, that you were very far from being in love with me. You even offered to marry me, as I remember it, as an act of pure friendship. I don't see quite why you couldn't respectably admit that you were in love with me then, since in spite of your best efforts I had broken through to the point. How about that?"

"It was all too sudden, silly. I couldn't bring myself round to that point of view in a minute. I had to have time. Oh, my dear young man,"

she continued, resuming her primmest manner, "how little, how singularly little do you know of that beautiful mystery, a woman's heart."

"A woman's what?"

"Heart."

"Oh, yes, to be sure. As I understand it, the only mystery is whether it exists or not."

"How can you say that?" cried Madge with sudden pa.s.sion, grasping at him almost roughly.

"I didn't," replied Harry.

"No, dear, excuse me, of course you didn't. Only I have to make a fool of myself every now and then...."

"But, oh, my dearest," she whispered presently with another change of mood, "if you knew what a time I've been through, really, since you've been gone! If you knew how I've lain awake at night fearing that it wouldn't turn out all right, that something would happen, that I'd lose you after all! I've scanned the lists of arrivals and departures in the papers; I've listened till I thought my ears would crack when other people talked about you. The very sound of your name was enough to make me weep with delight, like that frump of a girl in the poem, when you gave her a smile.... You see, I haven't been brave _all_ the time. There were moments.... Do you know that backbone feeling?"

"I think so," said Harry. "You mean the one that starts very suddenly at the back of your neck and shoots all the way down?"

"Yes, and at the same time you feel as if your stomach and lungs had changed places, though that's not so important. I don't see why people talk about loving with their hearts; the real feeling is always in the spine. Well, no amount of bravery could keep that from taking me by surprise sometimes, and even when I was brave it would often leave me with a suspicion that I had been very silly and weak to trust to luck to bring everything to a happy ending. But I never could bring myself to send word to you. I was determined to give you every chance of changing your mind; I knew you would come back at last, if you cared enough....

And if anything had happened, or if you had decided not to come back--well, I always had something to fall back on. The memory of that one evening, and the thought that I had been given the chance of loving you and had lived up to my love to the best of my ability...."

"That doesn't seem very much now, does it?" suggested Harry.

"No. Oh, to think how it's come out--beyond all my wildest dreams!... I never thought it would be quite as nice as this, did you?"

"Never. The truth has really done itself proud, for once."

"The truth--fancy, this is the truth! This!... Oh, nonsense, it can't be! We aren't _really_ here, you know. This is simply an unusually vivid subconscious affair--you know--the kind that generally follows one of the backbone attacks. It will pa.s.s off presently. It will, you know, even if it is what we call reality.... For the life of me, I don't really know whether it is or not!--Harry, did it ever occur to you that people are always marveling that dreams are so like life without ever considering the converse--that life is really very much like a dream?"

"A few have--a very few. A great play has been written round that very thing--_La Vida Es Sueno_--life is a dream. We'll read it together sometime.--Heavens, I never realized what it really meant till now! Do you know what this seems like to me? It seems like the kind of scene I have always wanted to write but never quite dared--simply letting myself go, without bothering about action or probability or motivation but just laying it on with a trowel, as thick as I could. All that, trans.m.u.ted into terms of reality--or what we call reality! Heavens, it makes me dizzy!"