For a little time the breeze was lightly baffling, and Griswold
confessed that if he had been at the helm they would have gone
ingloriously aground. But the small person in the correct yachting
costume was an adept in boat handling, as she seemed to be in everything
else; and when the sandy bottom was fairly yellowing under the
_Clytie's_ counter, there was a quick juggling of the tiller, a deft
haul at the sheet, and the big main-sail filled slowly to the rippling
song of the little seas splitting themselves upon the catboat's sharp
cut-water.

Once clear of the shallow bay, the helmswoman laid the course up the
lake; and Griswold, luxuriously lazy now that the working strain was
off, stretched himself comfortably on the cockpit cushions which he had
rummaged out of the cuddy cabin, and asked permission to light his pipe.
The permission given and the pipe filled and lighted, he pillowed his
head in his clasped hands and a great contentment, flowing into all the
interstices and levelling all the inequalities, lapped him in its
soothing flood. When the pipe had gone out there was joy enough left in
the pure relaxation; in that and in the contemplation through
half-closed eyelids of the pretty picture made by the tiller maiden
braced in the stern-sheets, her shining hair breeze-blown and flying
free under the captivating little yachting hat, and her eyes dancing....

Under such conditions a reflective analyst might conceivably wrench the
switch aside in front of the jogging train of thought to send it down a
shaded street to the lake-fronting house framed in shrubbery; to the
house and to the serene young house-mistress who had voluntarily stepped
from her goddess pedestal to become a flesh-and-blood woman to be loved
and cherished. He knew that Charlotte Farnham's readjustment of their
relations had in no wise modified her opinion of the _Joans_, or of the
men who were weak enough or besotted enough to be taken in the nets of
beguiling.... What would she think of him if she could see him lying at
Margery Grierson's feet, frankly and joyously revelling in the
triumphantly human charm of one of the _Joans_, and wishing with all his
heart--for the time being, at least--that there were no such things in
a world of effort as the higher ideals or any shackling requirement to
live up to them?

He was still playing whimsically with the query when he was made to
realize that the murmuring rush of water under the catboat's for