ant to row?" Chuck asked. "I'll get an extra pair of oars if you do."

"I don't know how. Besides, it's too much work. I guess I'll let you
do it."

Chuck was fitting his oars in the oarlocks. She stood on the landing
looking down at him. His hat was off. His hair seemed blonder than
ever against the rich tan of his face. His neck muscles swelled a
little as he bent. Tessie felt a great longing to bury her face in the
warm red skin. He straightened with a sigh and smiled at her. "I'll
be ready in a minute." He took off his coat and turned his khaki shirt
in at the throat, so that you saw the white line of his untanned chest
in strange contrast to his sun-burned throat. A feeling of giddy
faintness surged over Tessie. She stepped blindly into the boat and
would have fallen if Chuck's hard, firm grip had not steadied her.
"Whoa, there! Don't you know how to step into a boat? There. Walk
along the middle."

She sat down and smiled up at him. "I don't know how I come to do
that. I never did before."

Chuck braced his feet, rolled up his sleeves, and took an oar in each
brown hand, bending rhythmically to his task. He looked about him,
then at the girl, and drew a deep breath, feathering his oars. "I
guess I must have dreamed about this more'n a million times."

"Have you, Chuck?"

They drifted on in silence. "Say, Tess, you ought to learn to row.
It's good exercise. Those girls in California and New York, they play
tennis and row and swim as good as the boys. Honest, some of 'em are
wonders!"

"Oh, I'm sick of your swell New York friends! Can't you talk about
something else?"

He saw that he had blundered without in the least understanding how or
why. "All right. What'll we talk about?" In itself a fatal admission.

"About--you." Tessie made it a caress.

"Me? Nothin' to tell about me. I just been drillin' and studyin' and
marchin' and readin' some---- Oh, say, what d'you think?"

"What?"

"They been learnin' us--teachin' us, I mean--French. It's the
darnedest language! Bread is pain. Can you beat that? If you want to
ask for a piece of bread, you say like this: DONNAY MA UN MORSO DOO
PANG. See?"

"My!" breathed Tessie.

And within her something was screaming: Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He
knows French. And those girls that can row and swim and everything.
And me, I don't know anything. Oh, God, what'll I do?

It was as though she could see him slipping away from her,