Not less like to each other now than then, they stood at the entrance of the terraces. He had gained, perhaps, a couple of inches on her in height, but the piled gold of her hair, and his bare feet equalised that. No growth of manhood sheathed the smoothness of his cheeks; they looked like replicas of one type, still almost sexless in the glow of mere youth. Theirs was the full dower of their race, health and prosperity, glee and beauty, and the entire absence of any moral standard.
Faun and nymph, they stood there together, she in the thin blouse and white skirt of her tennis-clothes, he in the mere towel of his bathing. He had but thrown it on anyhow, without thought except to cover himself, and yet the folds of it fell from his low square shoulders with a plastic perfection. A hand buried in it held it round his waist, tightly outlining the springing of his thighs from his body. With her, too, even the full tennis-skirt, broad at the hem for purposes of activity, could not conceal the exquisite grace of her figure; above, the blouse revealed the modelling of her arms and the scarcely perceptible swell of her breasts. High-bred and delicate were they in the inimitable grace of their youth; what need had such physical perfection for any dower of the spirit?
She filled her eyes with the glow of the sunlit front, and then turned to him. “Colin, it’s a crime,” she said, “that you aren’t in Raymond’s place. I don’t like Raymond, and yet, if you’re right and he means to propose to me, I don’t feel sure that I shall refuse him. It won’t be him I refuse, if I do, it will be Stanier.”
“Lord, I know that!” said Colin. “If I was the elder, you’d marry me to-morrow.”
“Of course I should, and cut out Aunt Hester. And the funny thing, darling, is that we’re neither of us in love with the other. We like each other enormously, but we don’t dote. If you married Aunt Hester I shouldn’t break my heart, nor would you if I married Raymond.”
“Not a bit. But I should think him a devilish lucky fellow!”
She laughed. “So should I,” she said. “In fact, I think him devilish lucky already. Colin, if I do refuse him, it will be because of you.”
“Oh, chuck it, Violet!” said he.
She nodded towards the great stately house. “It’s a big chuck,” she said.
From the far side of the house there came the sound of motor-wheels on the gravel, and after a moment or two the garden door at the centre of the terrace opened, and Raymond came out. He was not more than an inch or so shorter than his brother, but his broad, heavy, short-legged build made him appear short and squat. His eyebrows were thick and black, and already a strong growth of hair fringed his upper lip. While Colin might have passed for a boy of eighteen still, the other would have been taken for a young man of not less than twenty-five. He stood there for a minute, looking straight out over the terrace, and the marsh below. Then, turning his eyes, he saw the others in the dusky entrance through the yew-hedge, and his face lit up. He came towards them.