“Oh, nothing, mamma, my precious. Good-bye.”
And she ran into the garden, swinging the towel over her head.
There was still a little coolness of dawn in the air, especially under the trees, and the freshness of the air and the hard exercise of climbing up the mountain-side brought an unaccustomed tinge of rose to Katya’s cheeks. The clear pool was waiting for her, and, stepping to its rocky edge, she bent over a little and gazed at her reflection in the cool water.
“Really, I grow more beautiful every day,” she murmured, pleased and excited.
She knelt down behind a rock and began to undress, now and again turning her eyes in the direction from which she expected her flute-player to come. But when her garments were ready for taking off, she did not remove them; instead, she sat down and surveyed the romantic and picturesque village below.
Yes, it was romantic enough, she thought, but it was so stupidly familiar. She knew every house, every tree, every rock, and if she did not know every man, woman, and child, it was because she did not care to. Yet, after all, people mattered enormously. The most seductive scenery in the world was not romantic except in its relationship to human beings. And even this boy, this flute-player, had a certain air, an atmosphere, something of distinction and attraction.
With sudden impatience and self-disgust, she shook herself, and then leaned over the edge of the water.
“Fool!” she ejaculated to her reflection; “sentimentalist! He is a little nincompoop and you know it. You are going to teach him a lesson: you are going to terrify him out of his wits.”
Raising her head, she saw the object of her thoughts issuing from the outskirts of the village and making his way up the mountain to the pool. He walked with an easy stride.
Hastily she took off her clothes, hid them in a cleft of the rocks, and stepped into the water which took her beautiful body with a laugh and a sigh. She swam about for a minute or two and then, calculating that by now he would be near at hand—the intervening rocks hid him from sight—she swam to a little narrow bay where the water was deep, and where she was hidden from view, and clung with her finger-tips to a ledge in the rocks.