When she came back, dressed and in lively spirits, her unbound hair shimmering in the sunshine like wet silk, she found him pacing the sea’s edge with an expression of gloomy resolution.
“I shall have to rewrite every word of these notes,” he said, striking his hand against his pocket. “I had a new thought just now as I was in the water and it changes everything.”
She threw herself down on the hot sand and spread out her hair to let it dry.
“Don’t let’s go yet, Adrian,” she pleaded. “I feel so sleepy and happy.”
He looked at her thoughtfully, hardly catching the drift of her words. “It changes everything,” he repeated.
“Lie down here,” she murmured softly, letting her gaze meet his with a wistful entreaty.
He placed himself beside her. “Don’t get hurt by the sun,” he said. She smiled at that—a long, slow, dreamy smile—and drawing him towards her with her eyes, “I believe you’re afraid of me to-day, Adrian,” she whispered.
Her boyish figure, outlined beneath the thin dress she wore, seemed to breathe a sort of classic voluptuousness as she languidly stretched her limbs. As she did this, she turned her head sideways, till her chin rested on her shoulder and a tress of brown hair, wet and clinging, fell across her slender neck.
A sudden impulse of malice seemed to seize the man who bent over her. “Your hair isn’t half as long as Nance’s,” he said, turning abruptly away and hugging his knees with his arms.
The girl drew herself together, at that, like a snake from under a heavy foot and, propping herself up on her hands, threw a glance upon him which, had he caught it, might have produced a yet further change in the book of philosophic notes. Her eyes, for one passing second, held in them something that was like livid fire reflected through blue ice.