"Well, we might come down for that if her Ladyship agrees. How is
Lamia?"
"Don't call her that, please. She has got a soul after all. But it is rather a disobedient one. It runs away like a little dog, and goes rabbit-hunting for days on end. She is in great form. We motor in the moonlight."
"Then I think it is quite time I did come," said Geoffrey.
So the Harringtons arrived in their sumptuous car on the afternoon before the dance of which Reggie Forsyth had spoken.
On the beach they found him in a blue bathing-costume sitting under an enormous paper umbrella with Miss Smith and the gipsy half-caste girl. Yaé wore a cotton kimono of blue and white, and she looked like a figurine from a Nanking vase.
"Geoffrey," said the young diplomat, "come into the sea at once. You look thoroughly dirty. Do you like sea-bathing, Mrs. Harrington?"
"I have only paddled," said Asako, "when I was a little girl."
Geoffrey could not resist the temptation of the blue water and the lazy curling waves. In a few minutes the two men were walking down to the sea's edge, Geoffrey laughing at Reggie's chatter. His arms were akimbo, with hands on the hips, hips which looked like the boles of a mighty oak-tree. He touched the ground with the elasticity of Mercury; he pushed through the air with the shoulders of Hercules. The line of his back was pliant as a steel blade. In his hair the sun's reflection shone like wires of gold. The Gods were come down in the semblance of men.
Yaé did not repress a sharp intake of her breath; and she squeezed the hand of the gipsy girl as if pain had gripped her.
"How big your husband is!" she said to Asako. "What a splendid man!"