VI
"Miami is not very far, is it?" she asked, as she sprang aboard the_Orange Puppy_.
"Not very, dear."
"We could get a license immediately, couldn't we?"
"I think so."
"And then it will not take us very long to get married, will it?"
"Not very."
"What a wonderful night!" she murmured, looking up at the stars. Sheturned toward the shore. "What a wonderful place for a honeymoon!...And we can continue business, too, and watch our caterpillars all daylong! Oh, it is all too wonderful, wonderful!" She kissed her hand tothe unseen camp. "We will be back to-morrow!" she called softly. Then asudden thought struck her. "You never can get the _Orange Puppy_ throughthat narrow lead, can you?"
"Oh, there is an easier way out," he said, taking the tiller as the sailfilled.
Her head dropped back against his knees. Now and then her lips moved,murmuring in sheerest happiness the thoughts that drifted through herenchanted mind.
"I wonder when it began," she whispered, "--at the ball-game--or onFifth Avenue--or when I saw you here? It seems to me as if I always hadbeen in love with you."
Outside in the ocean, the breeze stiffened and the perfume was tingedwith salt.
Lying back against his knees, her eyes fixed dreamily on the stars, shemurmured:
"Stirrups _will_ be surprised."
"What are you talking about down there all by yourself?" he whispered,bending over her.
She looked up into his eyes. Suddenly her own filled; and she put upboth arms, linking them around his neck.
And so the _Orange Puppy_ sailed away into the viewless, formless,starry mystery of all romance.
* * * * *
After a silence the young novelist, who had been poking the goldfish,said slowly: "That's pretty poor fiction, Athalie, but, as a matter ofsimple fact and inartistic truth, recording sentimental celerity, itstands unequalled."
"Straight facts make poor fiction," remarked Duane.
"It all depends on who makes the fiction out of them," I ventured.
"Not always," said Athalie. "There are facts which when straightly toldare far stranger than fiction. I noticed a case of that sort in mycrystal last winter." And to the youthful novelist she said: "Don't tryto guess who the people were if I tell it, will you?"
"No," he promised.
"Please fix my cushions," she said to nobody in particular. And afterthe stampede was over she selected another cigarette, thoughtfully, butdid not light it.