Away she fled, light as pollen, dancing in her steps in unconscious rhythm with the unseen orchestra. He caught her up where the flash of waves, rising and falling, burst upon them in tumultuous glory. She was leaning back, clutching at the brim of her hat, while the eager wind dragged at her skirt like a child entreating her to join in its frolic. She laid her hand on his arm.
“This is life. Doesn’t it wake you up—make you wonder why you ever had the drizzles? We’re not the same persons. I’m not. Cling on to me. I’ll blow away. You’ll have to chase me as you would your hat.”
They stepped down on to the sands and strolled along by the water’s edge, watching the bathers bobbing and splashing. When they had reached the point where the crowd grew less dense, they climbed to the board-walk for the return journey. They had made a discovery which their action confessed: aloneness brought silence; they spoke more freely when strangers swarmed about them.
Teddy became aware that, wherever they passed, Desire roused comment. Men, who were themselves accompanied, turned to gaze after him enviously. He compared her with the other women; she was in a separate class—there wasn’t one who could match her. She had a grace, a distinction, a subtlety—an indescribable and exquisite atmosphere of freshness, which lifted her beyond the range of competition. She was like a tropic bird which had flown into a gathering of house-sparrows. Moreover, she had a knack, highly flattering to his masculine vanity, of appearing to have appropriated him, of appearing to be making him her sole interest. The pride of possession shot through him that he, of all living men, should be allowed to walk by her side as if she belonged to him.
“You’re creating quite a sensation,” he told her.
She affected an improvised boredom. “Oh, yes. I always do.” Then, with a flash of girlishness: “Look here, you’re mine to-day absolutely, aren’t you?”
“To-day and always.”
“We’ll leave out the always. But to-day you’ll do whatever I tell you.”
“Anything at all.”
“Then go and bathe.”