It is you, isn’t it?” he called.
“I was wondering whether it was.
I couldn’t be sure from out there.”
“Why, yes it is,” she laughed, puzzled, and again just the least bit abashed by the reality of him.
For in spite of her obvious pleasure at seeing him again, only thinly repressed for the first moment or two, she was on the instant beginning to be troubled by her thoughts in regard to him — the difficulties that contact with him seemed to prognosticate.
For this meant contact and friendship, maybe, and she was no longer in any mood to resist him, whatever people might think.
And yet here was her friend, Grace Marr.
Would she want her to know of Clyde and her interest in him?
She was troubled.
And yet she could not resist smiling and looking at him in a frank and welcoming way.
She had been thinking of him so much and wishing for him in some happy, secure, commendable way.
And now here he was.
And there could be nothing more innocent than his presence here — nor hers.
“Just out for a walk?” he forced himself to say, although, because of his delight and his fear of her really, he felt not a little embarrassed now that she was directly before him.
At the same time he added, recalling that she had been looking so intently at the water: “You want some of these water lilies?
Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Uh, huh,” she replied, still smiling and looking directly at him, for the sight of his dark hair blown by the wind, the pale blue outing shirt he wore open at the neck, his sleeves rolled up and the yellow paddle held by him above the handsome blue boat, quite thrilled her.
If only she could win such a youth for her very own self — just hers and no one else’s in the whole world.
It seemed as though this would be paradise — that if she could have him she would never want anything else in all the world.
And here at her very feet he sat now in this bright canoe on this clear July afternoon in this summery world — so new and pleasing to her.
And now he was laughing up at her so directly and admiringly.
Her girl friend was far in the rear somewhere looking for daisies.
Could she?
Should she?
“I was seeing if there was any way to get out to any of them,” she continued a little nervously, a tremor almost revealing itself in her voice.
“I haven’t seen any before just here on this side.”
“I’ll get you all you want,” he exclaimed briskly and gayly.
“You just stay where you are. I’ll bring them.”
But then, bethinking him of how much more lovely it would be if she were to get in with him, he added: “But see here — why don’t you get in here with me?
There’s plenty of room and I can take you anywhere you want to go.
There’s lots nicer lilies up the lake here a little way and on the other side too. I saw hundreds of them over there just beyond that island.”
Roberta looked.
And as she did, another canoe paddled by, holding a youth of about Clyde’s years and a girl no older than herself.
She wore a white dress and a pink hat and the canoe was green.
And far across the water at the point of the very island about which Clyde was talking was another canoe — bright yellow with a boy and a girl in that.
She was thinking she would like to get in without her companion, if possible — with her, if need be.
She wanted so much to have him all to herself.
If she had only come out here alone.
For if Grace Marr were included, she would know and later talk, maybe, or think, if she heard anything else in regard to them ever.
And yet if she did not, there was the fear that he might not like her any more — might even come to dislike her or give up being interested in her, and that would be dreadful.
She stood staring and thinking, and Clyde, troubled and pained by her doubt on this occasion and his own loneliness and desire for her, suddenly called:
“Oh, please don’t say no.
Just get in, won’t you?
You’ll like it.
I want you to.
Then we can find all the lilies you want.
I can let you out anywhere you want to get out — in ten minutes if you want to.”
She marked the
“I want you to.” It soothed and strengthened her.
He had no desire to take any advantage of her as she could see.