“Two, Lois.”

“You dear and generous lad!...  And are there hair-pegs?  Heaven knows if my clipped poll will hold them.  Anyway, I can powder and patch, and—­ oh, Euan!  Is there lip-red and curd-lily lotion for the skin?  Not that I shall love you any less if there be none——­”

“I bespoke of Mr. Hake,” said I, laughing, “a full beauty battery, such as I once saw Betty Schuyler show to Walter Butler, having but then received it from New York.  And all I know, Lois, is that it was full of boxes, jars, and flasks, and smelled like a garden in late June.  And if Mr. Hake has not chosen with discretion I shall go South and scalp him!”

“Euan, I adore you!”

“You adore your battery,” said I, not convinced.

“That, too.  But you more than my mirrors, and my lip-red, and the lily lotion—­ more than my darling shifts and stays and shoon and gowns!...  I had never dreamed I could accept them from you.  But you had become so dear to me—­ and I could read you through and through—­ and found you so like myself—­ and it gave me a new pleasure to humble my pride to your desires.  That is how it came about.  Also, I saw those ladies....  And I do not think I shall be great friends with your Lana Helmer—­ even when I am fine and brave in gown and powder to face her on equal terms——­”

“Lois, what in the world are you babbling?”

“Let me babble, Euan.  Never have I been so happy, so content, so excited yet so confident....  Listen; do you dread tomorrow?”

“I?”

“Yes—­ that I might not do you honour before your fashionable friends?...  And I say to you, have no fear.  If my gowns are truly what I think they are, I shall conduct without a tremour—­ particularly if your Lana be there, and that careless, rakish friend of yours, Lieutenant Boyd.”

“Do you remember what you are to say to Boyd if he seems in any wise to think he has met you elsewhere?”

“I can avoid a lie and deal with him,” she said with calm contempt.  “But there is not a chance he’d know me in my powder,”

There was a silence.  Then the unseen water rippled and splashed.

“Poor Euan!” she said.  “I wish you might dare swim here in this heavenly place with me.  But we are not god and goddess, and the fabled age is vanished....  Good-night, dear lad....  And one thing more....  All you are to me—­ all you have done for me—­ don’t you understand that I could not take it from you unless, in my secret heart, I knew that one day I must be to you all you desire—­ and all I, too, shall learn to wish for?”

“It is written,” I said unsteadily.  “It must come to pass.”

“It must come,” she said, in the hushed voice of a child who dreams, wide-eyed awake, murmuring of wonders.

I slept on the river-sand, not soundly, for all night long men and horses splashed in the water all around me, and I was conscious of many people stirring, of voices, the dip of paddles, and of the slow batteaux passing with the wavelets slapping on their bows.  Then, the next I knew—­ bang!  And the morning gun jarred me awake.