Jerry returned to his reclining posture, lying on his side, his elbow in the grass, his hand supporting his head. He, at first, made no pretense of moving his eyes from her, and answered her remarks shortly and absently.
Against the background of variegated greens she presented a harmony of clear, thin tints like a water color. Her dress of sheer, white muslin was cut away from the throat in a point, and smoothly covering her arms and neck, let them be seen beneath its crisp transparency, warmly white under the cold white of the material. The heat of the afternoon and the excitement of the meeting had called up a faint pink to her cheeks. In her belt she had thrust a branch of wistaria and the trail of blossoms hung down along her skirt. She wore a wide leghorn hat, and in this she had fastened another bunch, the flowers lying scattered across the broad rim, and one spray hanging over its edge and mingling with the curls that touched her neck.
Jerry had never seen her look as she did this afternoon. Love, that she felt assured was returned, had lent her the fleeting beauty of an hour. She did not seek to penetrate the future. The happiness of the present sufficed her. She said little, plucking at a tuft of small wild flowers that grew beside her, conscious to her inmost fiber of her lover’s eyes.
“Why don’t you take off your hat?” he said. “There’s no sun here.”
She obediently took it off and threw it on the ground. The black velvet she wore around her head had become disarranged and she raised her hands to draw it into place and tuck a loosened curl under its restraint. He watched her fixedly.
“Now,” he said, reaching out to draw the hat to him and taking one of the wistaria blossoms from it, “put this in.”
“I have no glass,” she demurred, stretching a hand for the flower.
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll be your glass. I’ll tell you if it isn’t all right.”
She tucked the stem of the blossom into the velvet band, so that its trail of delicate lavender bells fell downward behind her ear.
“How is that?” she said, facing him, her eyes downcast. Her coquetries of manner had deserted her. With the flush on her face a glowing pink and her lashes on her cheeks, she was a picture of uneasy embarrassment.