She smiled frankly. Ted got another look at her and decided that pretty was hardly right. Beautiful, perhaps, but you couldn't tell with her hair that way under her cap.
“You're Mr. Billett, aren't you? Louise said last night that her brother was bringing a friend over Sunday. She also said that she'd introduce us—but we seem to have done that.”
“Rather. Introduction by drowning. The latest cleverness in Newport circles—see 'Mode.' And you're Mrs. Severance.”
“Yes. Nice water.”
“Perfect.”
A third look—a fairly long one—left Ted still puzzled. Age—thirty? thirty-five? Swims perfectly. On “Mode.” Wide eyes, sea-blue, sea-changing. An odd nose that succeeded in being beautiful in spite of itself. A rather full small mouth, not loose with sense nor rigid with things controlled, but a mouth that would suck like a bee at the last and tiniest drop of any physical sweet which the chin and the eyes had once decided to want. The eyes measure, the mouth asks, the cleft chin finds the way. A face neither content, nor easily to be contented—in repose it is neither happy nor unhappy but only matured. Louise's friend—that was funny—Louise had such an ideal simplicity of mind. Well—
“If you float—after a while you don't know quite where you're floating,” said Mrs. Severance's voice detachedly.
Ted made no answer but turned over, spreading out his arms. For a few moments they lay like corpses on the blue swelling round of the water looking straight through infinite distance into the thin faint vapor of the sky.
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“We might be clouds, almost, mightn't we?” with a slow following note of laughter.