“How brutal you can be!” she mused, smiling.
“Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?”
“I don't know.... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly—even pathetically; they usually do, that sort.... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose!... There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. ...And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things.... Now I have been brutal. But—I'm easily coloured by my environment.”
She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.
“Are you reconciled?” she asked presently.
“To what?”
“To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend:
“'Yon rising moon that looks for us again—How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion—and for one in vain!'”
“That is I—the one, you know. You may be here again; but I—I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again.”
Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: “I'm accustoming myself to this most significant perfume,” she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.