“All dry?”
She nodded.
“How many journeys? I made two.”
“Two,” said Orianda briefly.
“You’re all right then.” He wafted a kiss, swam back, and dressed slowly. Then as she did not appear he wandered along to her humming a discreet and very audible hum as he went. When he came upon her she still lay upon the grass most scantily clothed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said hastily, and full of surprise and modesty walked away. The unembarrassed girl called after him: “Drying my hair.”
“All right”—he did not turn round—“no hurry.”
But what sensations assailed him. They aroused in his decent gentlemanly mind not exactly a tumult, but a flux of emotions, impressions, and qualms; doubtful emotions, incredible impressions, and torturing qualms. That alluring picture of Orianda, her errant father, the abandoned Lizzie! Had the water perhaps heated his mind though it had cooled his body? He felt he would have to urge her, drag her if need be, from this “Black Dog.” The setting was fair enough and she was fair, but lovely as she was not even she could escape the brush of its vulgarity, its plebeian pressure.
And if all this has, or seems to have, nothing, or little enough to do with the drying of Orianda’s hair, it is because the Honourable Gerald was accustomed to walk from grossness with an averted mind.
“Orianda,” said he, when she rejoined him, “when are you going to give it up. You cannot stay here ... with Lizzie ... can you?”