Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/277

Rh skittles and quoits, wrestled naked to the waist with the Klaarvatsch lads, finding amusement in these friendly and even cordial embraces, and close entwinings of warm bodies. Sometimes it was he who was thrown, at other times he threw his antagonists; smiling at his own strength and supple grace, and forgetting in the heat and enjoyment of the moment the profounder joys of mind and art.

Guidon did not even think of the fact, yet so important a circumstance on that day, that he had just attained his majority and was now of an age for an obligatory amour with a girl of the country. The law and custom of Smaragdis had ceased to be present to his mind. His reverie was already sailing lightly away into the mists of the blue beyond.