She looked up at him, and though he could not make out the features, he discerned the expression they wore—an expression of peace and confidence. The girl trusted him delightfully.
‘Then what hides you from me?’ he insisted.
She answered him so low that he hardly caught the words. Certainly, at the moment he did not understand them, for happiness still confused him. ‘The body,’ she murmured; ‘the veil of the body.’
She returned the firm and equal pressure of his hands, and allowed him to draw her close. Their faces approached, and he looked searchingly down upon her, trying to pierce the veil in vain. The hot sunshine fell in a blaze upon their uncovered heads. The next moment the girl raised her lips to his, and almost before he knew it they had kissed.
Yet that kiss seemed the most natural thing in the world; at a stroke it killed the last vestige of shyness. Youth ran in his veins like fire.
‘Now, tell me exactly who you are, please,’ he cried, standing back a little for an inspection, but still holding her hands. They swung out at arm’s length like children.
‘I think first you should tell me who you are,’ she laughed. ‘I want to be a mystery a little longer. It’s so much more interesting!’
Leaning backwards with her hair tumbling down her neck, she looked at him out of eyes that he half imagined, half knew. Laughter and gentleness played over her like sunlight. Standing there, framed against the reeds of the river bank, with the blue waters behind and the wind and sky about her head, Paul thought that never till this moment had he understood the whole magic of a woman’s beauty. Yet at the same time he somehow divined that she was as much child as woman, and that something of eternal youthfulness mingled exquisitely with her suggestion of maturity.
‘Of course,’ he laughed in return, like a boy in mid-mischief, ‘that’s your privilege, isn’t it? My name, then, is——’
But there he stuck fast. It seemed so foolish to give the name he owned in that other tinsel world; it was merely a disguise like a frock-coat or evening dress, or the absurd uniform he had once assumed to deceive the children with. He almost felt ashamed of the name he was known by in that world!