“Are you going to have a siesta?” asked Rupert, looking at Muriel with fervour in his eyes.
“Not unless I fall off to sleep in this comfy chair,” she answered. “In that case, you must promise to wake me if my mouth drops open. Pull up your chair close to mine, and tell me the story of your life.”
Rupert stood up, and, taking off his coat, rolled back his shirt-sleeves, revealing a pair of well-made blue-veined arms. The leather belt which held up his white flannel trousers was pulled in tightly, and Muriel did not fail to admire the slimness of his waist as he settled himself in the long deck-chair at her side.
They were screened from the sun by an Arabic awning of many colours, and their eyes looked out across the oily surface of the water to the luxuriant river bank which seemed to pass before them like an unfolding picture, now revealing the open fields, now a village basking in the sunlight, now groups of palms and cedars in the deep shadows of which the peasants rested with their flocks, and now a native villa with mysterious latticed shutters and silent walled gardens. Every hundred yards or so there was a sakieh, by which the water was raised from the river into the irrigation channels; and as each came into sight the creaking of the great wooden cogwheel, and the song of the half-naked boy who drove his patient ox round and round, drifted to their ears, drowsily and with plaintive monotony.
Neither Muriel nor Rupert talked much, but their sleepy proximity engendered a quiet sympathy between them more potent than any words. Her hands lay idly in her lap; and presently, with a lazy movement, he extended his arm and let it fall across hers, so that his hand rested upon her hand. She turned slightly and smiled at him, but she did not move. Their two heads, each upon its cushion, drooped closer together. Muriel’s eyes closed, and, with a sense of gentle happiness pervading her mind, she fell asleep.
When she woke up, a quarter of an hour later, she knew that Rupert had just kissed her: she still felt the touch of his lips. She did not resent it; it was not unexpected. But somehow she felt that she was no longer carrying out an experiment. The handsome young man beside her, after these few weeks of probation, had managed, somehow, to step into the sanctuary of her heart, and had seated himself audaciously upon the throne which had stood vacant these many months.
She sat up in her chair and passed her hands across her eyes. Then she turned, and, with a smile upon her lips, looked steadily at her companion.
“You kissed me,” she said. She spoke in a tone almost of awe.
“Yes,” he answered, and his voice failed him. He turned his eyes to the bank of the river and clenched his teeth. He felt very uncomfortable.
“Why?” she asked. Her face was very close to his, and his hand was about her wrist.