They arrived at their new home after a sail of three hours down the winding shores of the Maine inlets. The day was hot and clear, the breeze hardly sufficient to belly the sails, and at times long calms surrounded them as they drifted on the tide. This new home was a fishing-outpost, in the lee of a rocky point, against which the vast waters lay in troubled slumber. During the hot voyage, while Dangerfield swapped stories with Captain Slocum, Inga had crept forward to the bow and stood leaning against the mast, her gaze eagerly set down the shifting shores to the approaching solemnity of the great sea, which every ledge seemed ready to reveal. In her excitement, she was impatient as a child, turning toward Dangerfield from time to time with eyes that danced with expectancy. As soon as they had made their dock, she sprang out and went bounding up the ledges until he could see her figure outlined against the sky, transfixed in gazing wonder.

When the baggage and provisions had been finally transferred and the house inspected, Dangerfield climbed to the crest. Inga had hardly moved from her first struck attitude of wonder. He came quietly to her side, interested in her surprise, feeling again old sensations through the discovery in her eyes, as though watching a child in a playhouse. From where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, the rocky, tumbling coast twisted to the horizon, undefiled by sight of human habitation. At its stone feet, the sea, like a cloth of peacock blue, lay in flat complacency with faint rim of winding lace. At times, across the placid expanse a foray of rippling zephyrs went wandering aimlessly and spent itself until once more the smooth spaces stretched out in quiet somnambulance. On the horizon, a fishing-boat or two lay becalmed; a steamer moved sluggishly, with heavy trail of impending smoke.

“It’s asleep now,” she said.

“It will wake.”

“It’s so smooth, so silky——”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No; no; it’s so vast. It’s asleep, but you don’t trust it, do you?”

“What do you feel?” he asked, watching her curiously.

“I feel cities, nations, over there, crowding down the horizon.”

“Not loneliness?”

“No, no; I feel so many human things in it—things that are gone and things that are coming.”

“As though you were watching history pass by,” he said gravely.

She looked up quickly and nodded.

“Funny, that’s not how it affects me,” he said. “It makes me feel little—insignificant. It crushes me at times, and at others, even in crushing me, it compensates by the feeling of the futility of what we strive for.”

She drew her brows together in a contemplative frown.

“I don’t believe I could feel that,” she said, in wonder. “I feel freer and lighter, as though there were more air to breathe, as though I could run for hours, as though there were no fences and no gates to stop you from doing anything you wanted to do.”

He laughed, feeling a communicative thrill.

“Sure you won’t feel too lonely?”

“The idea! With this?” Suddenly, to his surprise, she flung her arms about him and her lips sought his rapturously.

“Why, I believe you are some old sea-pirate’s daughter, after all!” he said, astounded by the unaccustomed display of emotion. “You’re like another being, Inga—even your eyes seem to have cleared away the mists.”

“Yes, yes; I feel it!” she cried joyfully. “Oh, Mr. Dan, promise to stay here forever and never, never go away!”

“Promised,” he said, in mock solemnity. “We stay here forever and give up all thought of cities and professions—and even of luncheons and suppers.”

“Oh, dear, I forgot!” she cried in contrition, and, laughing, she sprang away from him and went flying down the path to their new house.

With each succeeding day which went slipping by, he felt a pervading sense of heart’s ease. Inga was indeed a transformed being, a soul abruptly awakened. In the city, and even in their first camp by the lakeside, he had always felt in her a deference and a timidity toward him, as though, despite her love, she worshiped at a distance, a reticence which brought her confusion when his eyes were too strongly on her in the white of the day, which clung even to her lighter moods when she persisted with teasing eyes in calling him “Mr. Dan.” Now, all at once, all barriers vanished between them. Whether it was the mysterious current of the sea, or the completeness of their isolation, she came to him with a new independence, the pride of a wild animal, monarch of its wilderness.

Instead of waiting on his moods, there were times when, to his surprise, she sprang into the lead, carrying him after her for a wild beat along the shore against a growing gale, or a journey into the night, and when, during the day, he painted the curling water and the advancing cliffs, she would often leave him for long hours of exploration, returning with the news of some felicitous discovery. In such matters, her instinct was seldom at fault. She seemed to absorb his own intuitions, to sense what he sought in arrangements of masses and colors, so much so that, at times, he seemed to hear his own thoughts speaking through her voice.

Nothing pleased her more than to work for him, and the only quarrels they had were when he sought to divide her labors.

“Look out, Inga,” he would say, in mock sternness, “you will spoil me, you little heathen squaw!”

“Just make up your mind,” she said defiantly, “that you exist here only to paint—all the rest is mine. Stretch out in that hammock instantly, and if you dare to move, I’ll upset everything, and then there’ll be no dinner!”

His resistance never lasted long. He would sprawl back gratefully, pipe in mouth, and watch in Oriental luxury, while she flitted from the fireplace to the table, in the mellowness of the summer evenings, busying herself with the roasting of the potatoes and the broiling of the ham. The long day’s work done, and well done, satisfied in his ambitions, he followed the grace of her light movements, his eyes filled with never failing delight in her youth and supple strength. Once he said, half in earnest, half in fun:

“I suppose you think you’re fooling me with all this domestic pretence.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, her head on one side, the broiler in the air.

“I suppose you think you are going to make me believe that you are really married to me, whereas I know that you are not at all.”

“Oh, you do know that, do you?” she said, laughing.

“I do,” he said solemnly. “The old justice of the peace who married us thinks he’s bound you to me hard and fast; but I know better.”

She set the broiler back over the coals and came over to his side, vastly amused and yet with a telltale look in her eyes, as one suddenly surprised.

“You are a terribly wise Mr. Dan, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he said nodding. “You’ve made up your mind to fool me, that’s all. I don’t feel married to you in the least, and that’s the truth. Shouldn’t be surprised to wake up any day, young lady, and find you’ve disappeared—swum out to sea or taken to the woods.”

“I believe you’re half serious?” she said with a smile.

“I am—Pagan!”

“Well, don’t you like my way the best?” she said, looking down at him, thoroughly delighted.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On the end,” he said abruptly.

This answer brought a swift change in mood to her. The archness fled from her smile, and her eyes grew pensive and far-seeing.

“Isn’t it enough to be as happy as we are to-day?” she said, with a touch of sadness.

“I suppose so,” he said, with an uncontrollable burst of jealousy; “particularly when you can’t know what’s in the future or in the past.” He rose up quickly and caught her in her arms with a wild revolt against the measure of herself she allotted him, crying roughly: “Inga, you love one way, I another, and sometimes it drives me mad to think of what’s passed. I love you as a man loves; I want you all, completely, to know everything you have done, everything that’s behind your eyes now, everything you’re thinking.”

In his outburst of feeling, he brought her violently to him until his arms must have hurt her, and yet she made no protest except for a sudden struggle for the breath which he had crushed out of her body; but her face was radiant with the fury she had roused in him. Her eyes faced his steadily, baffling and amused.

“Yes; I want you all, completely—you, all your thoughts—everything that is you,” he repeated hungrily.

“No, you don’t,” she said, smiling, and then, as he wavered under the searching frankness of her look, she added, “now honest—do you?”

He laughed, drew her quickly to his lips, and released her.

“You’re right.”

She nodded her head victoriously and went back to the fireplace. Then she turned solemnly.

“I shall take care you never know,” she said looking back, “for, you see, I know you!”

“She is right—extraordinarily right,” he confessed to himself. Then he wondered how she could divine such things, and next if it were all intuition or if it were not the product of another experience, another man. And this thought tortured him.