Benjamin made no response . He pulled in his oars and let the dory float amid the ripples . The bottom of white sand , patterned over with coloured pebbles , was clear and distinct through the dark-green water . Mary Stella leaned over to watch the distorted reflection of her face by the dory 's side . `` Have you had pretty good luck this week , Benjamin ? Father could n't go out much -- he has been so busy with his hay , and Leon is such a poor fisherman . '' `` We 've had some of the best hauls of the summer this week . Some of the Rustler boats caught six hundred to a line yesterday . We had four hundred to the line in our boat . '' Mary Stella began absently to dabble her slender brown hand in the water . A silence fell between them , with which Benjamin was well content , since it gave him a chance to feast his eyes on the beautiful face before him . He could not recall the time when he had not loved Mary Stella . It seemed to him that she had always been a part of his inmost life . He loved her with the whole strength and fidelity of a naturally intense nature . He hoped that she loved him , and he had no rival that he feared . In secret he exalted and deified her as something almost too holy for him to aspire to . She was his ideal of all that was beautiful and good ; he was jealously careful over all his words and thoughts and actions that not one might make him more unworthy of her . In all the hardship and toil of his life his love was as his guardian angel , turning his feet from every dim and crooked byway ; he trod in no path where he would not have the girl he loved to follow . The roughest labour was glorified if it lifted him a step nearer the altar of his worship . But today he felt faintly disturbed .
In some strange , indefinable way it seemed to him that Mary Stella was different XXXXX her usual self .
In before for from if of on over since with