She had a deep symbolic faith in bathing. They were here to wash his mud away, and water was cleaner than talk. Talk, indeed, was but a surface pattern of their time. They hardly needed it, except as levity to mitigate a deep communion which sometimes grew almost intolerably sweet.
It was Blea Tarn, one of the many of that name, which they made peculiarly theirs, their favourite bathing-place, their best lunch-room. Effie stretched herself luxuriously on the close-cropped turf, at peace in mind and body.
“Sam,” she asked, “have you noticed that Frump at the Inn? She sits behind me at dinner.”
“No,” said Sam truthfully. “When I’m with you I notice nobody else. And I don’t know how you saw her if she sits behind you.”
“Eyes in the back of my head,” she explained. “You have them when you’re a woman. Do you mind if I give her a shock?”
“You would if she could see you now,” he said. “Yes, but she doesn’t deserve it,” said Effie complacently. She surveyed herself and Sam did the same. She pleased them both, taking her sun-bath there on the mossy turf. “But I may shock her?”
“You may do anything,” he said.
“Thank God for that,” said Effie joyously, and something glittered in the sun and fell with a splash far into the tarn. “Too deep to dive for it,” she decided. “Bang goes a shilling and I’m glad. I never liked pretence.”
“I say!” Sam protested, and then fell silent comprehendingly.
She looked at him and greeted his silence with a nod. “I shan’t catch cold,” she said, holding up her finger where the wedding ring had been. “I feel better now I’m rid of that.”