It was the very word he had already discovered.
And in they tumbled, laughing and splashing, like children. "Let's dry in the sun," she said coming out breathlessly, her face and arms glistening, the wet suit as tight as a black skin. She sat down and peeled off the rubber cap and shook her hair free. "This is the best thing I've done for months."
He stood a few yards away and threw pebbles into the sea. He felt awfully young and fit. It was almost as good as dreaming to be out there, like that, with her. He chucked as hard as he could, with all his force, competing against each good shot. "How about that?" he cried out, with a laugh.
Beatrix looked at him. She had merely accepted him before. He was like the bronze figure of "The Runner" come to life, with his small head and broad, deep chest, hard muscular arms, clean, hipless lines, tremendous strength. The sight of him gave her a sudden, unexplainable sense of shyness. She tried to shake it off. It was disconcerting and foolish.
He flung himself down and began to babble to her, pouring sand through his fingers. His dark, thick hair was still wet. His skin was tanned almost black. The whites of his eyes were as white as his teeth. His moustache, red as a rule, was burned to the color of straw. An odd thought flashed through her mind. He must like her to have spared her, to have respected her. How easy to have broken her if he'd cared!
"Isn't it wonderful here?" she said, resenting a feeling of self-consciousness.
"Pretty good, isn't it? Malcolm and a whole crowd of us bathed here last year. Very queer. I remember he told me about you that morning,—how well you swim, or something, and by Jove, you do swim well,—as well as you do everything else." He was not paying compliments. There was not the faintest suggestion of flirtation in his eyes. He made the statement of an accepted fact, and went on boyishly. "Do you wonder that I keep away from towns? Just look at it here. No umbrellas stuck about. No crowd of giggling women and cocktail hunters. No strings of stinking cars lined up to carry off soft people. Here's simplicity and truth. Will you ever get to like it, youngster?"
He was disappointing her. She wouldn't for the world have had him less charming than he was, or say the things that some men had said to her after bathing,—personal, fulsome things, caddish things. But,—she must look nice, she felt nice, and surely there might have been just a little admiration in his eyes. Anyone would think that they had been boy and girl together. He accepted it as a matter of course.
"Yes," she said, before she could stop herself, "with you."
He laughed softly and gratefully, leaned forward and kissed her foot, then sprang up and bent over her, put one arm round her shoulders and one under her knees, quietly gathered her up shoulder-high. "Come on," he said, "it's time to dress and eat," and he carried her to where her clothes were lying, with his cheek against her breast.