Miss Kinnaird made no reply to this; but in a moment she stretched out a pointing hand.
“Now,” she said, “the disturbing element is obtruding itself.”
Farther down the river there was a flash of something white amidst the pale green shimmer of the flood. Ida rose, but her companion beckoned her to sit down again.
“Oh,” she said, a trifle impatiently, “don’t be prudish. He’s ever so far off, and I’ve never had an opportunity to study anybody swimming.”
It was, of course, Weston, who supposed himself far enough from camp not to be troubled by spectators, swimming with a powerful side-stroke upstream. Ida sat down again, and both of them watched him as he drew a little nearer. So many times every minute his left arm swept out into the sunlight as he flung it forward with far-stretched palm. It fell with the faintest splash, and there was a little puff of spray as his head dipped and the water washed across his lips. Then the white limbs flashed amidst the green shining of the river, and the long, lithe form contracted, gleaming as a salmon gleams when it breaks the surface with the straining line. The still river rippled, and a sun-bronzed face shot half-clear again. Miss Kinnaird watched the swimmer’s progress with open appreciation.
“Dancing,” she said didactically, “isn’t to be compared with that! It’s the essence of rhythmic movement! I must certainly study swimming. I wish he’d come right on.”
Ida was not sure that she agreed with her; and, just then, Weston, swinging suddenly around, went down into the green depths, and, shooting up with white shoulders high above the water, swept away again down-stream. Miss Kinnaird rose as he did so, and turned back toward the camp.
“That packer is rather fine, considered as a muscular animal,” she said.
Ida smiled at this, somewhat sardonically.
“In your country you wouldn’t think of regarding him as anything else. Doesn’t being an artist emancipate one from the conventional point of view?”