agamore Water.

The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade,
the spray floated shoreward.

V

Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping
water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall
hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water
stretched away into the forest's sombre depths, barred here and there by
dusty sunbeams.

Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an
eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft
swept the yellow gravel.

Knee to knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of
each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them;
life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of
separation.

"I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow," she said, looking
at him.

The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would
not permit him to touch her.

"See to what you have brought me!" she said. "I'm utterly unable to live
without you. And now what are you going to do with me?"

Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it
against his face.

"There is a way," he said.

"A way?"

"Shall I lead? Would you follow?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, amused.

"There is a way," he repeated. "That thread of a brook leads to it."

He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream,
scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds
of moss.

He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe
swung westward.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing
recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.

"If we turned back now," she said, "it would be sunset before we reached
the club."

"What do we care?" he laughed. "Look!"

Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe
shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the
sinking sun.

Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist
meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the
stream wound in pools of gold.

The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and
he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole
in drops of fire.

There was a figure movin