as
the mistress of a yacht. He could see her reclining in a low easy-chair
upon the polished deck, with the big white sails billowing behind her,
and the sun shining upon the deep blue waves, and glistening through the
splash of spray in the air, and weaving a halo of glowing gold about
her fair head. Ah, how the tender visions crowded now upon him! Eternal
summer basked round this enchanted yacht of his fancy--summer sought
now in Scottish firths or Norwegian fiords, now in quaint old Southern
harbors, ablaze with the hues of strange costumes and half-tropical
flowers and fruits, now in far-away Oriental bays and lagoons, or among
the coral reefs and palm-trees of the luxurious Pacific. He dwelt upon
these new imaginings with the fervent longing of an inland-born boy.
Every vague yearning he had ever felt toward salt-water stirred again in
his blood at the thought of the sea--with Celia.

Why not? She had never visited any foreign land. "Sometime," she had
said, "sometime, no doubt I will." He could hear again the wistful,
musing tone of her voice. The thought had fascinations for her, it was
clear. How irresistibly would it not appeal to her, presented with the
added charm of a roving, vagrant independence on the high seas, free
to speed in her snow-winged chariot wherever she willed over the deep,
loitering in this place, or up-helm-and-away to another, with no more
care or weight of responsibility than the gulls tossing through the air
in her wake!

Theron felt, rather than phrased to himself, that there would not be
"ten or a dozen in the party" on that yacht. Without defining anything
in his mind, he breathed in fancy the same bold ocean breeze which
filled the sails, and toyed with Celia's hair; he looked with her as she
sat by the rail, and saw the same waves racing past, the same vast dome
of cloud and ether that were mirrored in her brown eyes, and there was
no one else anywhere near them. Even the men in sailors' clothes,
who would be pulling at ropes, or climbing up tarred ladders, kept
themselves considerately outside the picture. Only Celia sat there, and
at her feet, gazing up again into her face as in the forest, the man
whose whole being had been consecrated to her service, her worship, by
the kiss.

"You've passed it now. I was trying to point out the Jumel house to
you--where Aaron Burr lived, you know."

Theron roused himself from his day-dream, and nodded with a confused
smile at his neighbor.