And as you may have seen the silver moon slip slowly into the sea, so Eve vanished slowly into the pool—all but her shapely little round head, with its crisp bright-brown hair and its lovely face, happy now, exhilarated, and eager as are the faces of adventurers.
And Eve thought if one didn't have to eat, if one didn't end by being cold, if one could make time stand still—she would choose to be always and forever a slice of the silver moon, lolling in a mountain pool.
She had the kind of hair that wets to perfection. But it was not the sort of permanent wave which lasts six months or so, costs twenty-five dollars, and is inculcated by hours of alternate baking and shampooing. Eve had always had a permanent wave. She feared neither fog nor rain, nor water in any form of application. And so it was that, now and then, as she lolled about the pool, she disappeared from one fortunate square yard of surface and reappeared in another.
Half an hour had passed, when suddenly the mountain stillness was broken by men's voices.
Eve was at the opposite side of the pool from where she had left her clothes. Between her and the approaching voices was the little island. She landed hastily upon this and hid herself among the bushes.
Three gross, fat men and one long, lean man, with a face like leather and an Adam's apple that bobbed like a fisherman's float, came down to the beach, sweating terribly, and cast thereon knapsacks, picnic baskets, hatchets, fishing-tackle, and all the complicated paraphernalia of amateurs about to cook their own lunch in the woods.
All but one had loud, coarse, carrying voices, and they all appeared to belong to the ruling class. They appeared, in short, to have neither education nor refinement nor charm nor anything to commend them as leaders or examples. Eve wondered how it was possible for them to find pleasure even in each other's company. They quarrelled, wrangled, found fault, abused each other, or suddenly forgot their differences, gathering about the fattest of the fat men and listening, almost reverently, while he told a story. When he had finished, they would throw their heads far back and scream with laughter. He must have told wonderfully funny stories; but his voice was no more than a husky whisper, so that Eve could not make head or tail of them.
After a while the whispering fat man produced from one of the baskets four little glasses and a fat dark bottle. And shortly after there was less wrangling and more laughter.
The thin man with the leathery face and the bobbing Adam's apple put a fishing-rod together, tied a couple of gaudy flies to his leader, and began to cast most unskilfully from the shores of the pool, moving along slowly from time to time.