And Peter in looking at her saw a white face, sensitive as a flower’s; and a mouth, red as a cherry, long and drooping and curved; and two great gray eyes, clear and wistful in expression; and over the eyes, dark brows, like a bird’s wings spread for flight. Her black hair had broken loose and hung about her shoulders, giving her a touch of wildness. Across the whiteness of her forehead it brooded like a cloud. In the green church of the wood she seemed sacred to Peter.
She laughed throatily, breaking the suspense. “Oh, it’s only you.”
Peter stepped out of the underbrush. Then he saw that she had removed her shoes and stockings, and was standing on the edge of the little river. Her feet were wet and as small as her hands. They looked cold as marble in the green dusk. Why was it? More than anything else, the sight of her feet made him unhappy for her, made him want to care for her, made him want to bring a smile to her mouth.
“Yes, it’s only me,” he said; “but—but I wish it wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
She tossed her head, as though she were indignant with him for being sorry, but she looked at him slantingly, curiously and kindly. “Why should you be sorry? You don’t know who I am? You’re not sorry; you only say that.”
He protested. “But I am. I didn’t mean to overhear; but, you know, I heard what you said—— I was afraid you’d do it.”
She sat down, trailing her feet in the water. She was smiling now, secretly and to herself, as if she didn’t want him to know it. “It’s too little,” she pouted. “I couldn’t drown in that.”
Peter seated himself at her side, with his knees drawn up to his chin. When he spoke, it was with an air of grave confession. “I’m awfully glad it was too little.”
She turned her head, looking at him from under her long lashes provocatively; but he was staring straight before him with vacant eyes, as if something very sweet and awful were happening. She reached out her hand and touched him; she noticed how he trembled. “And if it hadn’t been too little, it wouldn’t have mattered—not to you.”
He didn’t answer her immediately. When he spoke it was slowly, as if each word hurt as he dragged it out. “It would have mattered, because then you wouldn’t have been in the world.”