“An empty day, a wasted day. Am I a sentimentalist?”
The woman laughed a laugh that was peculiarly witching.
“Model piscators, always gossiping, never keeping cover, missing rises, letting our wits wander. Gabriel, you are making a horrible cockney of me. I could not look my Scotch gillie in the face.”
An indefinite suggestiveness appeared even in these sparse, jesting words. The trout silvering the Mallan’s shadows were poorly imperilled by the girl and the man upon the bank. Too human a Providence interfered with the genuine bigotry of sport. The fish, had they known it, were but dumb players in the opening stagecraft of an eternal and stage-worn play.
“We must catch something,” said the girl, decisively, plucking at the grass that caressed her dress.
“I am a most serious Walton, a most complete angler.”
The girl smoothed the creases from her skirt, Gabriel watching her hands gliding over the green undulations with a pleasurable languor. Her hair, full of light, curled over her ears and neck, and her shoulders were peculiarly graceful, as she stood half stooping, her long lashes sweeping her sunburned cheeks. A sudden upward glance and her eyes met Gabriel’s. A passionate challenge flashed in the sun. Ophelia’s cheeks kindled. Gabriel flushed an echo of red under his bronzed skin. They were both silent awhile as in thought.
The girl stretched out her arms like Clytie appealing the setting sun. A golden glow streamed above the woods; the scent of grass lay heavy on the air; a great silence abode over the meadows.
A kingfisher flashed, a living sapphire, before their eyes. Gabriel drew back behind the willows and walked on silently in the long grass. The girl watched him awhile, and then followed, her green skirt sweeping the golden flowers at her feet. She was as fair and perilous as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, perilous with her proud eyes and her glimmering hair.
Gabriel had seen rings swaying on the still silver of the stream. He was on his knees crawling towards the bank. Ophelia, poring over the sensations of her own heart, had drawn near with an unconscious egotism of desire. Not reasoning on the scene before her, she drew nearer still with the western sunlight beating on her face. The man by the bank had half risen from his crouching posture. A swing of the rod, a swishing of tackle, a twinging start of pain. The silver trout had escaped temptation through the flash of a woman’s arm.