Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/228

218 just then. It was life. Life had never seemed so kind and generous, so good and beautiful to her as now! She sighed, then suddenly lifted her paddle, plunged it into the dark water at her side, and slipped out of the little cave-spot, into the sunshine again. Slipped out into silence again, too.

"You aren't talking to me very much this morning," later Richard informed her.

She made no reply.

"You're a funny girl. I never knew a girl in my life who had silence for a line."

"Do you want me to talk?"

"No."

"When I'm in a canoe, near the shore, like this, I love sneaking around the corners on the birds and animals when they're not expecting you, and see what they're up to."

Some five, ten, fifteen minutes later, the canoe, pushing its nose around a bit of wooded peninsula, came abruptly upon a deer standing upon the shore. Laurel made no exclamation at sight of him, nor did she stop paddling or vary her stroke. She simply gazed in silent admiration for a second or two, then abruptly turned and looked back over her shoulder, to find out if her companion saw the beautiful creature too. Richard thought he had never seen anything so lovely, so blinding as Laurel's eyes as they met his! He smiled, nodded. She turned back satisfied. Not a word was spoken, but sharing the deer that way was—well—"Look here," said Richard a moment later, "haven't you paddled enough? Come, won't you please sit down here on the cushions and talk?"