"Not half so nice as seeing each other now. Why, we shouldn't remember
any of the jolly things we've done: together."
He had seen Maisie Durham for the first time. She wondered whether that
had made him think of it.
"No, but the effect might be rather stunning--I mean of seeing _you_."
"It wouldn't. And you'd be nothing but a big man with a face I rather
liked. I suppose I should like your face. We shouldn't _know_ each
other, Jerrold."
"No more we should. It would be like not knowing Dad or Mummy or Colin.
A thing you can't conceive."
"It would be like not knowing anything at all ... Of course, the best
thing would be both."
"Both?"
"Knowing each other and not knowing."
"You can't have it both ways," he said.
"Oh, can't you! You don't half know me as it is, and I don't half know
you. We might both do anything any day. Things that would make each
other jump."
"What sort of things?"
"That's the exciting part of it--we wouldn't know."
"I believe you _could_, Anne--make me jump."
"Wait till I get out to India."
"You're really going?"
"Really going. Daddy may send for me any day."
"I may be sent there. Then we'll go out together."
"Will Maisie Durham be going too?"
"O Lord no. Not with us. At least I hope not ... Poor little Maisie, I
was a beast to say that."
"Is she little?"
"No, rather big. But you think of her as little. Only I don't think of
her."
They stood up; they stood close; looking at each other, laughing. As he
laughed his eyes took her in, from head to feet, wondering, admiring.
Anne's face and body had the same forward springing look. In their very
stillness they somehow suggested movement. Her young breasts sprang
forwards, sharp pointed. Her eyes had no sliding corner glances. He was
for ever aware of Anne's face turning on its white neck to look at him
straight and full, her black-brown eyes shining and darkening and
shining under the long black brushes of her eyebrows. Even her nose
expressed movement, a sort of rhythm. It rose in a slender arch, raked
straight forward, dipped delicately and rose again in a delicately
questing tilt. This tilt had the delightful air of catching up and
shortening the curl of her upper lip. The exquisite lower one sprang
forward, sharp and salient from the little dent above her innocent,
rounded chin. Its edge curled slightly forward in a line firm as ivory
and fine as the edge of a flower. As long as he lived he would remember
the way of it.
And she, she was aware of his body, slender and tense under his white
flannels. It seemed to throb with the power it held in, prisoned in the
smooth, tight muscles. His eyes showed the colour of dark hyacinths, set
in his clear, sun-browned skin. He smiled down at her, and his mouth and
little fawn brown moustache followed the tilted shadow of his nostrils.