“Yes, I can almost see it,” Ruth answered. “They arranged a sign between them, I’m sure of it, and Halcy must have forgotten the sign as she approached the boat—so breathless with excitement was she—because dimly, she saw her lover waiting there at the pier. I think old man Brown must have been suspicious, for just as Halcy neared the steps to the pier, she heard his gruff hallo from the town hall piazza, where he must have gone to have a look out. Startled, she tripped, casting her bundle into the waters just at her feet, an unwitting prelude to her own dark fate.” Ruth paused impressively here.

“Have mercy!” squeaked Cynthia.

“How is it, Ruth Barton, that no one found such a bundle this morning?” I spoke more sharply than I intended, but her talk made me increasingly uneasy and I wished her to stop.

Instead, she sailed serenely onward, her prow cutting in two such questions of evidence. “The waters swallowed the bundle swift and sure as though some lost soul beneath starved for the chocolate and reached out his dead hand to drag it quickly below.”

Cynthia gave a little shriek. “And then what happened, Ruthie?”

“Henry, too, heard his father’s call of alarm, and he flew up the intervening steps to clasp Halcy’s hands and pull her down to the waiting boat. In seconds, the two had cast off, their deftness spurred by their longing hearts and willing hands.”

“Ruth!” I was on my feet.

“And the father?” Cynthia prodded. Neither girl paid me heed, so wrapped were they in their fiction.

“Well, this is the tragic part. The father, thinking that the splash of oars he heard was nothing but the tides, and not being able to see into the obscuring darkness, turned away from the pier and headed homeward, back to his warm bed. Even as he tossed and turned, settling himself back into sleep, his only son sailed onward toward his dea—”

“Stop it, Ruth. Stop it at once!” I stood over her, now furious with this stupid girl and her story.

“Maisie Thomas! Whatever is the matter?”

“It’s not right, Ruth. Halcy Adams and Henry Brown are truly dead, and nobody can ever know what happened.”

“It is only a story, Maisie,” Cynthia piped in.

“No,” I began, my voice trembling, “no, it is not a story, Cynthia. It is—” But I found I could not finish, I was so hot suddenly, and confused. The greedy delight Ruth took in all the details she imagined was something terrible, and it called to mind my own imagination’s flight; and I was fully shamed. I excused myself from their openmouthed surprise and walked into the House, blindly seeking a place to put my head in my hands and think.