"Or a woman," Lettice suggested, still seated as he had posed her, but watching his search among the pebbles with her chin against her shoulder.
"Cover those number threes!" he said, without looking up from it, picking out the tiniest shells into a little pink heap upon his hand.
"They're not number threes," she retorted; "and they have to carry me. You'd find them heavy enough if you were under them."
He glanced up quickly at the half-hidden outline of the face behind her shoulder.
"I daresay," he murmured.
Something in the manner of his agreement brought the colour into her cheek, and, perhaps to hide it, she leant over towards him, and, propped on one elbow, began to search for the little shells and drop them into his hand.
She noticed, as she had never before had opportunity, the suggestion of a fine capacity in the shape of his open hand, and the sharp decision of its rare creases.
"How deep your lines are!" she said.
He looked with enquiry at the darkened features which were bent above his hand, and in reply she raked with a nail, as pink as and more polished than they, the little pile of shells back towards his thumb.
"Oh, that!" he exclaimed, as she ran the tip of her finger along the furrow. "It's wonderful, isn't it? I never saw a heart line on any hand that filled me with such respect. Cut evidently by one of those obstinately permanent affections that make one gasp in books. Let's look at yours?"