y and girl stood together in
the bows in a silence that neither seemed able to break.

CHAPTER VII

SURRENDER

That night Fairharbour Bay looked like a velvet bed on which glittered
many jewels. _The Blue Moon_, lighted from bows to stern lay in the
centre, and from her deck there went up showers of coloured rockets that
fell like burning rain upon the sea. There was a string band on board,
and the strains floated across the water as echoes from another world--a
wonder-world of soft melodies and laughing voices and lightly splashing
oars.

Toby sat in the stern of a boat with a single rower in front of her, and
trailed her fingers through the magic water. She was bare-headed, and the
breeze of the summer night stirred tenderly the golden ringlets that
clustered about her bow. Her face, seen now and then in the flare of the
rockets, had a strange look, almost a look of dread. Her blue eyes were
very wide open, like the eyes of a startled child.

She spoke scarcely at all, and Bunny did not urge her. Only as he rowed,
he watched her with grave determination on his boyish face. He had
claimed her as his partner early in the evening, and she had made no
attempt to thwart him; but something in that half scared silence of
hers moved him very deeply. His own was protective, resolutely
reassuring.

Once, when she started nervously at an unexpectedly loud report from one
of the rockets, he spoke to her as he would have spoken to a small,
frightened animal.

"It's all right. I'll pull out a bit, shall I? These things make such a
beastly row."

She thanked him in an undertone, and he began to row steadily away from
the yacht and the thronging boats.

"You tell me when I've gone far enough!" he said.

But she did not tell him, and he rowed on and on through the dark water
with only the rhythmic splashing of the oars to fill the silence between
them.

They left the laughter and the noise behind, and began to draw towards
the far corner of the bay. The shore rose steeply from the water here,
and there came to them the soft breaking of the waves against the cliff
as they neared it.

Toby came out of her silence with a jerk. "Bunny, do you really think it
would answer?"

"Sure!" said Bunny promptly.

He drew in his oars with the words, and they drifted on the summer tide.

Toby was looking at him in the starlight with a dumb and piteous
irresolution in her eyes.

Bunny leaned to her as he sat, with outstr