He paused, at a loss how to describe her hair. It was not golden, rather that strong brass-colour that, had he seen it on a sophisticated townswoman he would have dubbed "peroxide." It was oddly metallic hair, not only in its colour, but in the carven ripples of it where she wore it pulled across her low brow and massed in heavy braids round her head. That way of wearing her hair right down to her brows, except for a narrow white triangle of forehead showing, boy-like, at one side, gave her an oddly animal look—using the word in its best sense. A look as of some low-browed, heavy-tressed faun, fearless and unashamed—it was only in her eyes that mystery lay.
"My hair?" she exclaimed, showing her big white teeth in a laugh as frank as a boy's; "but that, you know, is not natural! It was an accident!"
"An accident! How on earth——?"
"Why, I was doing the ménage for a chemist and his wife over the border, at Cannes. And she had hair like this, and one day she gave me a little bottle and said: 'Désirée, you're a good girl, but you don't know how to make the best of yourself. You put some of this on your head.' I rubbed some on, one side only, just to see what would happen, and next day I found one half of my head golden—golden like the sun. 'Mon Dieu!' I said, 'but what do I look like, one half yellow and one half brown!' So I poured it on all over. It is nothing now because I have not put on the stuff for so long, but at one time it was beautiful. Such hair! Below my waist, and gold, oh, such a gold! Now it wants doing again."
She ducked her head down for him to see the crown of it, and he perceived from the parting outwards two inches of unabashed dark hair—almost blue it looked by contrast with the circling wrappings of yellow. Archie, immensely tickled at finding this splendid young savage in the Back o' Beyond with dyed hair, could but shout with mirth, and Désirée, totally unoffended, joined in. When he went back that evening he felt he knew her far better than on the preceding day. In intimacies between men and women each day marks a distinct phase, making a series of steps; and the only possible thing to do is to see that the steps do not lead downwards. Like most people when on those magic stairs, Archie gave no heed to the question.
The next day he unconsciously took up their conversation of the day before—a sure sign of intimacy if ever there were one. They were resting again, for he said it was too hot to work; and the sunset effect he wanted was growing later every day.
"So you could care a little for some one else before you marry Auguste?" he suggested lightly enough, and looking away from her to the snow mountains that bared white fangs in the blue of the sky.
She laughed a little, stretched herself, drooped her lids, was in a flash, and for a flash, entirely woman—alluring, withdrawing, sure of herself. As she gained in poise Archie felt his own tenure on self-control slipping away from him.
"Could you?" he persisted, his eyes by now back on her changing face.
"How does one care? What is it?" she evaded. "I do not think you would be able to tell me. You are so cold, so English, you would care just as much as would be pleasant and never enough to make you uncomfortable!"