s if he knew himself hushed, almost
admonished, and not for the first time; yet it was an effect that might
have brought before him rather what she had gained than what he had
missed.

Besides, who but himself really knew what he, after all, hadn't, or even
had, gained? The beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate,
as he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips
were over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash
and the play become for him too a sensation. That couldn't be fixed upon
him as missing; since if it wasn't personally floating, if it wasn't
even sitting in the sand, it could yet pass very well for breathing
the bliss, in a communicated irresistible way--for tasting the balm. It
could pass, further, for knowing--for knowing that without him nothing
might have been: which would have been missing least of all.

"I guess I've never been jealous," he finally remarked. And it said more
to her, he had occasion next to perceive, than he was intending; for it
made her, as by the pressure of a spring, give him a look that seemed to
tell of things she couldn't speak.

But she at last tried for one of them. "Oh, it's you, father, who are
what I call beyond everything. Nothing can pull YOU down."

He returned the look as with the sociability of their easy communion,
though inevitably throwing in this time a shade of solemnity. He
might have been seeing things to say, and others, whether of a type
presumptuous or not, doubtless better kept back. So he settled on the
merely obvious. "Well then, we make a pair. We're all right."

"Oh, we're all right!" A declaration launched not only with all her
discriminating emphasis, but confirmed by her rising with decision
and standing there as if the object of their small excursion required
accordingly no further pursuit. At this juncture, however--with the
act of their crossing the bar, to get, as might be, into port--there
occurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat
against the wind. Her father kept his place, and it was as if she had
got over first and were pausing for her consort to follow. If they were
all right; they were all right; yet he seemed to hesitate and wait for
some word beyond. His eyes met her own, suggestively, and it was only
after she had contented herself with simply smiling at him, smiling ever
so fixedly, that he spoke, for the remaining importance of it, from the
bench; wher