"The noise of the rapids!" he answered, after a strange pause, "and your
footstep is very light."
She leaned her chin on her hand, rested against the rail of the coping,
looked meditatively into the torrent below, and replied: "Is it so
light?" Then after a pause: "You have not asked me how I came, who came
with me, or why I am here."
"It was first necessary for me to conceive the delightful fact that you
are here," he said in a dazed, and, therefore, not convincing tone.
She looked him full in the eyes. "Please do not pay me the ill compliment
of a compliment," she said. "Was it the sailor who spoke then or the--or
yourself? It is not like you."
"I did not mean it as a compliment," he replied. "I was thinking about
critical and important things."
"'Critical and important' sounds large," she returned.
"And the awakening was sudden," he continued. "You must make allowance,
please, for--"
"For the brusque appearance of a very unimaginative, substantial, and
undreamlike person? I do. And now, since you will not put me quite at my
ease by assuming, in words, that I have been properly 'chaperoned' here,
I must inform you that my father waits hard by--is, as my riotous young
brother says, 'without on the mat.
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