When he reached the opposite bank he looked at his body. His skin was not harmed. He jerked the useless boots off and threw them away. Then he hung his holstered pistol on the branch of one of the vine-trees to wait until his body had dried of the deadly liquid.
He looked back to the hill.
The girl was stepping into the liquid.
III
The sun gleamed against her hair, and her eyes were very blue and steady as they watched Caine. She took one step and then another, her eyes never wavering from Caine. The blue dress disappeared into the liquid, inch by inch, and Caine noticed the glitter of the silver buttons that ran down the front of it.
The girl moved slowly, and the liquid reached her shoulders and her chin, and then it was rippling against her lower lip. She was half-way.
She came up carefully. Her eyes were still steadily watching Caine.
It was a moment when the tenseness disappeared out of him, and the time and situation went out of his mind. It was a moment when there was nothing but the girl with the steady eyes and the shining hair, coming slowly out of the liquid, dress open, and golden-tan body rippling with each movement. Time stopped and silence hung in the air, broken only by the sound of her bare legs going through the liquid.
Caine watched, feeling his pulse beating in his temples and the girl stood before him at the edge of the liquid, her tan skin wet and shiny.