Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke.
There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sentinel, was watching the people who were going on to the boat. He was very good-looking and self-contained, but his air of soldierly alertness was rather irritating.
“Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, where there’s a tent on the lawn?” he asked.
“Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?” asked Ursula, who was always rushing in too fast.
“To get out?” smiled Gerald.
“You see,” cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken rudeness, “we don’t know the people, we are almost complete strangers here.”
“Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,” he said easily.
Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then she smiled at him.
“Ah,” she said, “you know what we mean. Can’t we go up there, and explore that coast?” She pointed to a grove on the hillock of the meadow-side, near the shore half way down the lake. “That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. Isn’t it beautiful in this light. Really, it’s like one of the reaches of the Nile—as one imagines the Nile.”
Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant spot.