She said: "Yes, it was a net."
"Did my being here drive you away from your favourite pool?"
She looked at him candidly. "You are not a sportsman, are you?"
"N—no," he admitted, turning red. "Why?"
"People who take trout in nets are fined and imprisoned."
"Oh! But you said you had a net."
"It wasn't a fish net."
He waited. She offered no further explanation. Sometimes she looked at him, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream. There was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she stood there—a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim, with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless, thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of the whitest neck he had ever seen.
The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inward contemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her serene self-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily, to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowly turned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt like saying "excuse me."
"Do they bite you?" she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle.