"Oh yes, many a time."
"I did not enjoy it at first. I hope you did. I think Christina did. It was the fairest evening imaginable; and my oar, every stroke I made, broke and shivered purple and golden waters. It was sailing over the rarest possible mosaic in which the pattern was constantly shifting. I studied it, while I was studying how to begin what I had to do. Then, after a while, when we were well out from shore, I lay on my oars, and asked Miss Thayer whether she were sure that her judgment was according to her words, in the matter we had been discussing at the house? She asked what I meant. I put it to her then, whether she would choose to marry a man who liked another woman better than he did herself?
"Christina's eyes opened a little, and she said 'Not if she knew it.'
"'Then you gave a wrong verdict up there,' I said.
"'But that was about what the _man_ should do,' she replied. 'If he has made a promise, he must fulfil it. Or the woman, if it is the woman.'
"'Would not that be doing a wrong to the other party?'
"'How a wrong?' said Christina. 'It would be keeping a promise. Every honourable person does that.'
"'What if it be a promise which the other side no longer wishes to have kept?'
"'You cannot tell that,' said Christina. 'You cannot know. Probably the other side does wish it kept.'
"I reminded her that she had just declared _she_, in the circumstances, would not wish it; but she said, somewhat illogically, 'that it made no difference.'
"I suggested an application of the golden rule."
"Yes," said Dolly; "I think that rule settles it. I should think no woman would let a man marry her who, she knew, liked somebody else better."
"And no man in his senses--no _good_ man," said Sandie, "would have a woman for his wife whose heart belonged to another man; or, leaving third parties out of the question, whose heart did not belong to _him_.
I said something of this to Christina. She answered me with the consequences of scandal, disgrace, gossip, which she said attend the breaking off of an engagement. In short, she threw over all my arguments. I had to come to the point. I asked her if she would like to marry _me_, if she knew that I liked somebody else better?
"She opened her eyes at me. 'Do you, Sandie?' she said. And I told her yes.
"'Who?' she asked as quick as a flash. And I knew then that _her_ heart was safe," Mr. Shubrick added with a smile. "I told her frankly, that ever since Christmas Day, I had known that if I ever married anybody it would be the lady I then saw with her.
"'Dolly!' she cried. 'But you don't know her, Sandie.'"
Mr. Shubrick and Dolly both stopped to laugh.
"I am sure that was true. And I should think unanswerable," said Dolly.
"It was not true. Do you think it is true now?"
"Well, you know me a little better, but I should think, not much."
"Shows how little you can tell about it. By the same reasoning, I suppose you do not know _me_ much?"
"No," said Dolly. "Yes, I do! I know you a great deal, in some things.
If I didn't"---- she flushed up.
"We both know enough to begin with; is that it? Do you remember, that evening, Christmas Eve, how you sat by the corner of the fireplace and kept quiet, while Miss Thayer talked?"
"Yes." Dolly remembered it very well.
"You wore a black dress, and no ornaments, and the firelight shone on a cameo ring on your hand, and on your face, and the curls of your hair, and every now and then caught this," said Mr. Shubrick, touching Dolly's chain. "Christina talked, and I studied you."
"One evening," said Dolly.
"One evening; but I was reading what was not written in an evening.
However, I left Christina's objection unanswered--though I do not allow that it is unanswerable; and waited. She needed a little while to come to her breath."
"Poor Christina!" said Dolly.
"Not at all; it was poor Sandie, if anybody. I do not think Christina suffered, more than a little natural and very excusable mortification.
She never loved me. I had guessed as much before, and I was relieved now to find that I had been certainly right. But she needed a little while to get her breath, nevertheless. She asked me if I was serious?
then, why I did not tell her sooner? I replied that I had had a great fight to fight before I could make up my mind to tell her at all.
"And then, as I judge, _she_ had something of a fight to go through.
She turned her face away from me, and sat silent. I did not interrupt her; and we floated so a good while on the coloured sea. I do not believe she knew what the colours were; but I did, I confess. I had got a weight off my mind. The bay of Sorrento was very lovely to me that evening. After a good while, Christina turned to me again, and I could see that she was all taut and right now. She began with a compliment to me."
"What was it?" Dolly asked.
"Said I was a brave fellow, I believe."
"I am sure I think that was true."
"Do you? It is harder to be false than true, Dolly."
"All the same, it takes bravery sometimes to be true."
"So Christina seemed to think. I believe I said nothing; and she went on, and added she thought I had done right, and she was much obliged to me."
"That was like Christina," said Dolly.
"'But you are bold,' she said again, 'to tell me!'
"I assured her I had not been bold at all, but very cowardly.
"'What do you expect people will say?'
"I told her I had been concerned only and solely with the question of how she herself would take my disclosure; what she would say, and how she would feel.
"She was silent again.
"'But, Sandie,' she began after a minute or two which were not yet pleasant minutes to either of us,--'I think it was very risky. It's all right, or it will be all right, I believe, soon,--but suppose I had been devotedly in love with you? Suppose it had broken my heart? It _hasn't_--but suppose it had?'"
"Yes," said Dolly. "You could not know."
"I think I knew," said Mr. Shubrick. "But at any rate, Dolly, I should have done just the same. 'Fais que dois, advienne que pourra,' is a grand old motto, and always safe. I could not marry one woman while I loved another. The question of breaking hearts does not come in. I had no right to marry Christina, even to save her life, if that had been in danger. But happily it was not in danger. She did shed a few tears, but they were not the tears of a broken heart. I told her something like what I have been saying to you.
"'But Dolly!' she said. 'You do not know her, you do not even _know her_.' That thought seemed to weigh on her mind."
"What could you say to it?" said Dolly.