"More at liberty?" Gertrude repeated. "Please unfasten the boat."
Felix untwisted the rope and stood holding it.
"I should be able to say things to you that I can't give myself the pleasure of saying now," he went on.
"I could tell you how much I admire you, without seeming to pretend to that which I have no right to pretend to.
I should make violent love to you," he added, laughing, "if I thought you were so placed as not to be offended by it."
"You mean if I were engaged to another man? That is strange reasoning!"
Gertrude exclaimed.
"In that case you would not take me seriously."
"I take every one seriously," said Gertrude. And without his help she stepped lightly into the boat.
Felix took up the oars and sent it forward. "Ah, this is what you have been thinking about? It seemed to me you had something on your mind.
I wish very much," he added, "that you would tell me some of these so-called reasons--these obligations."
"They are not real reasons--good reasons," said Gertrude, looking at the pink and yellow gleams in the water.
"I can understand that! Because a handsome girl has had a spark of coquetry, that is no reason."
"If you mean me, it 's not that. I have not done that."
"It is something that troubles you, at any rate," said Felix.
"Not so much as it used to," Gertrude rejoined.
He looked at her, smiling always. "That is not saying much, eh?"
But she only rested her eyes, very gravely, on the lighted water.
She seemed to him to be trying to hide the signs of the trouble of which she had just told him. Felix felt, at all times, much the same impulse to dissipate visible melancholy that a good housewife feels to brush away dust. There was something he wished to brush away now; suddenly he stopped rowing and poised his oars. "Why should Mr. Brand have addressed himself to you, and not to your sister?" he asked.
"I am sure she would listen to him."
Gertrude, in her family, was thought capable of a good deal of levity; but her levity had never gone so far as this.
It moved her greatly, however, to hear Felix say that he was sure of something; so that, raising her eyes toward him, she tried intently, for some moments, to conjure up this wonderful image of a love-affair between her own sister and her own suitor.
We know that Gertrude had an imaginative mind; so that it is not impossible that this effort should have been partially successful.
But she only murmured, "Ah, Felix! ah, Felix!"
"Why should n't they marry? Try and make them marry!" cried Felix.
"Try and make them?"
"Turn the tables on them. Then they will leave you alone.
I will help you as far as I can."
Gertrude's heart began to beat; she was greatly excited; she had never had anything so interesting proposed to her before.
Felix had begun to row again, and he now sent the boat home with long strokes. "I believe she does care for him!" said Gertrude, after they had disembarked.
"Of course she does, and we will marry them off.
It will make them happy; it will make every one happy.
We shall have a wedding and I will write an epithalamium."
"It seems as if it would make me happy," said Gertrude.
"To get rid of Mr. Brand, eh? To recover your liberty?"
Gertrude walked on. "To see my sister married to so good a man."
Felix gave his light laugh. "You always put things on those grounds; you will never say anything for yourself.
You are all so afraid, here, of being selfish.
I don't think you know how," he went on. "Let me show you!
It will make me happy for myself, and for just the reverse of what I told you a while ago. After that, when I make love to you, you will have to think I mean it."
"I shall never think you mean anything," said Gertrude.
"You are too fantastic."
"Ah," cried Felix, "that 's a license to say everything!
Gertrude, I adore you!"