I jumped to my feet, caught a glimpse of something white, and of two startled but appealing eyes, then tore down to the bank.  There, already twenty yards downstream, placidly floated the boat, its painter trailing from the bows, and its whole behaviour pointing to a leisurely but firm resolve to visit Pangbourne.

My own boat was close at hand.  But when did hot youth behave with thought in a like case?  I did as ninety-nine in a hundred would do.  I took off my coat, kicked off my shoes, and as the voice cried, “Oh, please, do not trouble,” plunged into the water.  The refractory boat, once on its way, was in no great hurry, and allowed itself to be overtaken with great good-humour.  I clambered in over the stern, caught up the sculls which lay across the thwarts, and, dripping but triumphant, brought my captive back to shore.

“How can I thank you?”

If my face was red as I looked up, it must be remembered that I had to stoop to make the boat fast.  If my eyes had a tendency to look down again, it must be borne in mind that the water from my hair was dripping into them.  They gazed for a moment, however, and this was what they saw:—­

At first only another pair of eyes, of dark grey eyes twinkling with a touch of merriment, though full at the same time of honest gratitude.  It was some time before I clearly understood that these eyes belonged to a face, and that face the fairest that ever looked on a summer day.  First, as my gaze dropped before that vision of radiant beauty, it saw only an exquisite figure draped in a dress of some white and filmy stuff, and swathed around the shoulders with a downy shawl, white also, across which fell one ravishing lock of waving brown, shining golden in the kiss of the now drooping sun.  Then the gaze fell lower, lighted upon a little foot thrust slightly forward for steadiness on the bank’s verge, and there rested.

So we stood facing one another—­Hero and Leander, save that Leander found the effects of his bath more discomposing than the poets give any hint of.  So we stood, she smiling and I dripping, while the blackbird, robbed of the song’s ending, took up his own tale anew, and, being now on his mettle, tried a few variations.  So, for all power I had of speech, might we have stood until to-day had not the voice repeated—­

“How can I thank you?”

I looked up.  Yes, she was beautiful, past all criticism—­not tall, but in pose and figure queenly beyond words.  Under the brim of her straw hat the waving hair fell loosely, but not so loosely as to hide the broad brow arching over lashes of deepest brown.  Into the eyes I dared not look again, but the lips were full and curling with humour, the chin delicately poised over the most perfect of necks.  In her right hand she held a carelessly-plucked creeper that strayed down the white of her dress and drooped over the high firm instep.  And so my gaze dropped to earth again.  Pity me.  I had scarcely spoken to woman before, never to beauty.  Tongue-tied and dripping I stood there, yet was half inclined to run away.