ct:

"Yes, dearest, it is true.
Speech is but broken light upon the depth
Of the unspoken: even your loved words
Float in the larger meaning of your voice
As something dimmer."

There was nothing audacious in her manner of repeating it--no coquettish
reference, in voice or glance, to him. She threw into her eyes an
expression of complete absorption in the spirit and story of the poem,
and appeared to be far away with Don Silva and Fedalina.

Her seriousness and evident intensity of feeling were a surprise to him.
He had simply been trying her with a careless stroke, but he seemed to
strike true flint. "I could have sworn," he thought to himself, "that
she was making fun of Ebling's proposition to read to her to-day when
she said one could stand hearing a poem a good many times." And he
actually went on repeating passage after passage, while she sat with her
hands folded and her eyes fixed dreamily, drinking it in like distant
music sounding all the way from the Spanish shores.

They were both so absorbed--not in the poem, but in thoughts that
floated under the poem and circled right around themselves--that they
did not hear the dipping of the oars as the doctor rowed back to shore
in the white moonlight--not softened now, as it had been a while ago, by
the mellow tints in the west. "Hallo!" he called. "Come down now and
embark."

"Shall we?" asked Bruce in a voice so low that it seemed almost tender.

She answered by getting up, and he took the burnous off the log and
folded it about her shoulders. It gave her a conscious thrill.

They sauntered down, and Bruce gave her his hand to make the descent of
the bank. Ruth sprang up like a gazelle while the doctor held the boat
to shore, and then pushed it off when the occupants were seated.

"I'm the poorest rower in Christendom," said Bruce, taking up the oars
and making a few awkward strokes.

"Never mind about rowing," said Miss Custer. "When we get out into the
current let us drift: I like it just as well."

Bruce did so, resting the handles of the oars upon his knees.

Perfect silence reigned. The moon was strangely bright, making the very
air silvery. Miss Custer, with the rarest tact, let the stillness alone,
knowing there was power in it.

By and by Bruce murmured,

"With dreamful eyes,
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.

What a strange effect moonlight and water have upon us, Miss Custer!
They