So Thessalie went away to dress and Dulcie tiptoed into her bath, which the maid had already drawn.
But it was an hour before they appeared on the lawn, cool and fresh in their white skirts and shoes, and found Westmore and Barres, red and drenched, hammering each other across the net in their second furious set.
So Dulcie took her first lesson under Garry’s auspices; and she took to it naturally, her instinct being sound, but her technique as charmingly awkward as a young bird’s in its first essay at flying.
To see her all in white, with sleeves tucked up, throat bare, and the sun brilliant on her ruddy, rippling hair, produced a curious impression on Barres. As far as the East is from the West, so far was this Dulcie of the tennis court separated from the wistful, shabby child behind the desk at Dragon Court.
Could they possibly be the same—this lithe, fresh, laughing girl, with white feet flashing and snowy skirts awhirl?—and the pale, grey-eyed slip of a thing that had come one day to his threshold with a faltering request for admittance to that wonderland wherein dwelt only such as he?
Now, those grey eyes had turned violet, tinged with the beauty of the open sky; the loosened hair had become a net entangling the very sunlight; and the frail body, now but one smooth, soft symmetry, seemed fairly lustrous with the shining soul it masked within it.
She came over to the net, breathless, laughing, to shake hands with her victorious opponents.
“I’m so sorry, Garry,” she said, turning penitently to him, “but I need such a lot of help in the world before I’m worth anything to anybody.”