Thelma | Page 6

been at
sea; I have been coasting all about your lovely land. My yacht went
across to Seiland this afternoon."

She regarded him more intently, and observed, with the critical eye of a
woman, the refined taste displayed in his dress, from the very cut of his
loose travelling coat, to the luxurious rug of fine fox- shins, that lay so
carelessly cast on the shore at a little distance from him. Then she gave
a gesture of hauteur and half-contempt.
"You have a yacht? Oh! then you are a gentleman. You do nothing for
your living?"
"Nothing, indeed!" and he shrugged his shoulders with a mingled air of
weariness and self-pity, "except one thing--I live!"
"Is that hard work?" she inquired wonderingly.
"Very."
They were silent then, and the girl's face grew serious as she rested on
her oars, and still surveyed him with a straight, candid gaze, that,
though earnest and penetrating, had nothing of boldness in it. It was the
look of one in whose past there were no secrets-- the look of a child
who is satisfied with the present and takes no thought for the future.
Few women look so after they have entered their teens. Social artifice,
affectation, and the insatiate vanity that modern life encourages in the
feminine nature--all these things soon do away with the pellucid
clearness and steadfastness of the eye--the beautiful, true, untamed
expression, which, though so rare, is, when seen infinitely more
bewitching than all the bright arrows of coquetry and sparkling
invitation that flash from the glances of well-bred society dames, who
have taken care to educate their eyes if not their hearts. This girl was
evidently not trained properly; had she been so, she would have
dropped a curtain over those wide, bright windows of her soul; she
would have remembered that she was alone with a strange man at
midnight--at midnight, though the sun shone; she would have simpered
and feigned embarrassment, even if she could not feel it. As it
happened, she did nothing of the kind, only her expression softened and
became more wistful and earnest, and when she spoke again her voice
was mellow with a suave gentleness, that had something in it of
compassion.

"If you do not love life itself," she said, "you love the beautiful things
of life, do you not? See yonder! There is what we call the meeting of
night and morning. One is glad to be alive at such a moment. Look
quickly! The light soon fades."
She pointed towards the east. Her companion gazed in that direction,
and uttered an exclamation,--almost a shout,--of wonder and admiration.
Within the space of the past few minutes the aspect of the heavens had
completely changed. The burning scarlet and violet hues had all melted
into a transparent yet brilliant shade of pale mauve,--as delicate as the
inner tint of a lilac blossom,--and across this stretched two wing-shaped
gossamer clouds of watery green, fringed with soft primrose. Between
these cloud-wings, as opaline in lustre as those of a dragon-fly, the face
of the sun shone like a shield of polished gold, while his rays, piercing
spear-like through the varied tints of emerald, brought an unearthly
radiance over the landscape--a lustre as though the moon were, in some
strange way, battling with the sun for mastery over the visible universe
though, looking southward, she could dimly be perceived, the ghost of
herself--a poor, fainting, pallid goddess,--a perishing Diana.
Bringing his glance down from the skies, the young man turned it to the
face of the maiden near him, and was startled at her marvellous
beauty--beauty now heightened by the effect of the changeful colors
that played around her. The very boat in which she sat glittered with a
bronze-like, metallic brightness as it heaved gently to and fro on the
silvery green water; the midnight sunshine bathed the falling glory of
her long hair, till each thick tress, each clustering curl, appeared to emit
an amber spark of light. The strange, weird effect of the sky seemed to
have stolen into her eyes, making them shine with witch-like
brilliancy,--the varied radiance flashing about her brought into strong
relief the pureness of her profile, drawing as with a fine pencil the
outlines of her noble forehead, sweet mouth, and rounded chin. It
touched the scarlet of her bodice, and brightened the quaint old silver
clasps she wore at her waist and throat, till she seemed no longer an
earthly being, but more like some fair wondering sprite from the
legendary Norse kingdom of Alfheim, the "abode of the Luminous
Genii."

She was gazing upwards,--heavenwards,--and her expression was one
of rapt and almost devotional intensity. Thus she remained for some
moments, motionless as the picture of an expectant angel painted by
Raffaele or Correggio; then reluctantly