XXXVI
A woman passed along the driveway, and looked at him. He looked at her. The rock on which he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where she walked, they could see each other plainly. It seemed to him that as she went by she relaxed her pace to study him. She was a little woman, pretty, sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps and passed again. She passed a third time and a fourth. Each time she passed she gave him the same long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady's maid or a chauffeur's wife.
He turned to watch a young man taking a swan dive from the spring-board. Having run the few steps which was all the spring-board allowed of, he stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at his thighs. With the leap forward his arms went out at right angles. When he turned toward the water they bent back behind his head, his palms twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed downward, cleaving the lake with a clean, splashless penetration. The whole movement had been lithe and graceful, the curve of a swan's neck, the spring of a flying fish.
Not till she was close beside him did he notice that the little woman had left the roadway, crossed the intervening patch of blueberry scrub, and seated herself on a low bowlder close to his own.
Her self-possession was that of a woman with a single dominating motive. "You've just arrived with Miss Ansley, haven't you?"
The voice, like the manner, was intense and purposeful. In assenting, he had the feeling of touching something elemental, like hunger or fire, which wouldn't be denied.
"And you're at Harvard."
He assented to this also.
"At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, don't they?"
"I've heard so. Why do you ask?"