“This is a glorious stroke; let’s hit it up a little, swing a little farther—­and make for the mouth of the river.  No talking till we come in sight.  We’re off!”

It was ten miles to the mouth of the river, as they both understood, so this was nonsense of the most obvious sort.  But the imagination took hold of them and they swung away on over the smooth, shining floor with the long vigorous strokes which are so exhilarating to the accomplished skater.  In silence they flew, only the warm, clasped hands making a link between them, their faces turned straight toward the great golden disk in the eastern heavens.  Richard was feeling that he could go on indefinitely, and was exulting in his companion’s untiring progress, when he felt her slowing pull upon his hands.

“Tired?” he asked, looking down at her.

“Not much, but we’ve all the way back to go—­and we ought not to be away so long.”

“Oughtn’t we?  I’d like to be away forever—­with you!”

She looked straight up at him.  His eyes were like black coals in the dim light.  His hands would have tightened on hers, but she drew them away.

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Mr. Richard Kendrick,” said she, as quietly as one can whose breath comes with some difficulty after long-sustained exertion.  “By the time we reached—­even the mouth of the river, you’d be tired of my company.”

“Should I?  I think not.  I’ve thought of nothing but you since the day I saw you first.”

“Really?  That’s—­how long?  Was it November when you came to help Uncle Calvin?  This is February.  And you’ve never spent so much as a whole hour alone with me.  You see, you don’t even know me.  What a foolish thing to say to a girl you barely know!”

“Foolish, is it?” He felt his heart racing now.  What other girl he knew would have answered him like that?  “Then you shall hear something that backs it up.  I’ve loved you since that day I saw you first.  What will you do with that?”

She was silent for a moment.  Then she turned, striking out toward home.  He was instantly after her, reached for her hands, and took her along with him.  But he forced her to skate slowly.

“You’ll trample on that, too, will you?” said he, growing wrathful under her silence.

But she answered, quite gently, now:  “No, Mr. Kendrick, I don’t trample on that.  No girl would.  I simply—­know you are mistaken.”

“In what?  My own feeling?  Do you think I don’t know—­”

“I know you don’t know.  I’m not your kind of a girl, Mr. Kendrick.  You think I am, because—­well, perhaps because my eyes are blue and my eyelashes black; just such things as that do mislead people.  I can dance fairly well—­”

He smothered an angry exclamation.

“And skate well—­and play the ’cello a little—­and—­that’s nearly all you know about me.  You don’t even know whether I can teach well—­or talk well—­or what is stored away in my mind.  And I know just as little about you.”