"You have had some weary travel," he said, "and probably not more than
half of it in the path."

And she feared he would glance at the rents in her frock, forgetting
that they were not sufficiently infrequent facts to be noticeable.

"He treats me like a child," she thought. "He expects me to tear my
dress! He forgets, that, while thirteen years were making a statue of
her, they were making a woman of me!" And she snatched away her hand.

"I have the boat below," he said, without paying attention to the
movement. "You took the longest way round, which, you have heard, is the
shortest way home. You have never been on the lake with me." And he was
about to assist her in.

She stepped back, hesitating.

"No, no," he said. "It is very well to think of walking back, but it
must end in thinking. You have no impetus now to send you over another
half-dozen miles of wood-faring, no pique to sting, Io."

And before she could remonstrate, she was lifted in, the oars had
flashed twice, and there was deep water between herself and shore. She
was in reality too much fatigued to be vexed, and she sat silently
watching the spaces through which they glanced, and listening to the
rhythmic dip of the oars. The soft afternoon air, with its melancholy
sweetness and tinge of softer hue, hung round them; the water, brown and
warm, was dimpled with the flight of myriad insects; they wound among
the islands, a path one of them knew of old. From the shelving rocks a