'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
a baboon under my clothing.' He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
thought.
He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
was his physical self thinking.
After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
brine in his hair.
'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--' Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
'It _is_ blood?' she said.
'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.
'Are you sure?' He laughed.
'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.
'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.
She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.
'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?' She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.
Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
eat.
'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?' 'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
sleeplessness.