This moment of achievement was possibly the most exquisite in the whole of Gwenna's life.
Shaking the wet from her hair, she laughed with pure, completed, rapturous joy; glorying in her youth, in the life that charged each little blue vein of her, in this power of swimming that she felt had been given her only to please him.
"Why, I could swim you to—Oh! Mind you don't upset!" she exclaimed.
For Paul had stooped; leaning over the side of the boat he had passed one arm beneath her shoulders; he was bending over her to take a kiss, all fresh with lake-water.
"You'll topple over," she warned him.
"Pooh," he said. "One, Gwenna!"
He always said her name as if it were "darling"—he did not call her "dear" or "darling" much. She found that she adored him for this, as for everything that he said or did. Once, in one of those old-time talks of theirs, Leslie had said, "For every three times a man asks for a kiss refuse him twice. An excellent plan, Taffy——" The happy girl-wife thought there need be no use of "plans" with him and her. She teased him—if she wanted to.
Eyes laughed into eyes now. She threw back her head, evading him, but only for a second. His mouth met hers, dewy as a lotus-bud. The boy and girl kissed closely. Nothing could come between that kiss, she thought.
Then, sudden as a flash of summer lightning, something came.
A thought; a shadow; a fear at last.