"You—wouldn't."
And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing her through shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merriment they emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearms lashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of her chin.
Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, her hair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on his stomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. And the crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon, almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quiet now with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilled little rills of sand from one fist into the other.
"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!"
"Are I, Getaway?"
"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the other blind."
"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so."
"You've had enough fellows tell you so."
"Yes, but—but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what I mean by pretty."
"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty."