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Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
page 53 of 586 (09%)
--looking fixedly upon the pavement the while. It has been said
that men love with their eyes; women with their ears.

As Owen and himself were little more than acquaintances as yet, and
as Springrove was wanting in the assurance of many men of his age,
it now became necessary to wish his friends good-evening, or to find
a reason for continuing near Cytherea by saying some nice new thing.
He thought of a new thing; he proposed a pull across the bay. This
was assented to. They went to the pier; stepped into one of the
gaily painted boats moored alongside and sheered off. Cytherea sat
in the stern steering.

They rowed that evening; the next came, and with it the necessity of
rowing again. Then the next, and the next, Cytherea always sitting
in the stern with the tiller ropes in her hand. The curves of her
figure welded with those of the fragile boat in perfect continuation,
as she girlishly yielded herself to its heaving and sinking, seeming
to form with it an organic whole.

Then Owen was inclined to test his skill in paddling a canoe.
Edward did not like canoes, and the issue was, that, having seen
Owen on board, Springrove proposed to pull off after him with a pair
of sculls; but not considering himself sufficiently accomplished to
do finished rowing before a parade full of promenaders when there
was a little swell on, and with the rudder unshipped in addition, he
begged that Cytherea might come with him and steer as before. She
stepped in, and they floated along in the wake of her brother. Thus
passed the fifth evening on the water.

But the sympathetic pair were thrown into still closer companionship,
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