"Listen, Erik, do you mind if I spend the morning alone? I have some letters to write and things. Then I'll meet you on the beach and we'll go swimming and lie on the sand together. Will you?"
He nodded cheerfully and swung himself out of bed. His calm had returned. The memories of the curiously abandoned, shameless Rachel of the night lingered for a moment questioningly and then left him.
They ate breakfast together and Dorn strode off alone. He felt surprised at himself. He had forgotten all about his trip to Europe.
"The sun and the rest here are doing me good," he thought. "I'm getting normal. But a little stupidity won't hurt."
The morning slipped away and he returned to the beach from a walk through the village. It was early afternoon and the sands were deserted. The sea lay like a great Easter egg under the hot sun, a vast and inanimate daub of glittering blue, green, and gold. He seated himself on the burning sand and stared at it. Years could pass this way and he could sit dreaming lifeless words, the sea like a painted beetle's back, the sea like a shell of water resting on a stenciled horizon. A wind was dying among the clouds. It had blown them into large shapeless virgins. Puffy white solitudes over his head. He looked down and saw Rachel coming toward him. She was carrying a woolen blanket over her arms.
She approached and appeared excited. Her face flushed.
"Shall we go in?"
He nodded. Her voice disturbed him. He would have preferred her calm, gentle. Particularly after last night. She unloosened her clothes quickly and hurried nude toward the water. Dorn, after an uneasy survey of the empty beach, watched her. In the glare of the sun and sand her body seemed insistently unfamiliar. He would have preferred her familiar. He joined her and they pushed into the water together. Her excited manner depressed him.
"Let's swim," he called.
A blue, singing moment under the water and they were up, swimming slowly into the unbroken sheet of the sea. Rachel came nearer to him, the water sparkling from her moving arms.