Barrington, hampered by her embarrassment, had twisted round on his cushions and was chaffing Nan. Nan was looking her best and, as usual, was quite unconscious of the fact. In her loose, blowy muslin, standing erect, leaning against the pole with the water dripping from her hands, she seemed the soul of summer and unspoilt girlhood against the background of lazy river and green shadows. There was something infantile and appealing about Nan. Her flaxen hair fitted her like a shining cap of satin. Her eyes were inextinguishably bright and blue; above them were delicate, golden brows. Her red lips seemed always slightly parted, ready to respond to mischief or merriment. She was small in build—the kind of girl-woman a man is tempted to pick up and carry. Her chief beauty was her long, slim throat and neck; she was a white flower, swaying from a fragile stem. It was impossible to think that Nan knew anything that was not good.
After they had passed under Magdalen Bridge they had the river very much to themselves: the rain had driven most of the voyagers to cover. For long stretches there was no sound but their own voices, the splash of the pole and the secret singing of birds.
Jehane, with trailing hands and brooding eyes, watched this man; she wanted him—she did not know why—she wanted him for herself. Sometimes she became so concentrated in her mood that she forgot to listen to what was being said. Through her head went humming significant and disconnected stanzas, which she repeated over and over:
“Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.”
Jehane had once been told that she was Pre-Raphaelite in appearance; she never forgot that—it explained her to herself. She had quarreled forever with a man who had said that Rossetti’s women resulted from tuberculosis of the imagination. The truth of the remark was unforgivable—she knew that she herself suffered from some such spiritual malady.
A question roused her from her trance.
“I say, Billy, are you married yet?”