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.