Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/366

 The raindrops increased. They were beginning to blur the surface of the water, making little, widening, vanishing circles that met and disappeared and were followed by other circles. The hammock was getting wet. He unhooked it, gathered it over one arm, and carrying into the loggia, hung it on the back of the chair that Wolffe had occupied.

That fellow! Was he chuckling in a railway carriage over a disconsolate fool, and catching Molly's satirical eyes?

He faced about, and then stood very still. Molly was unfastening the punt's painter. Her white face looked like a distant flower against the dim, wet greenness. She stepped into the punt, picked up the pole, and came gliding across with smooth fatefulness.

Kit went down to the landing stage.

"You must be wet?"

"O, nothing."

"I have brought the hammock in."

He bent down and held the punt against the stage. She stepped out, and leaving the pole lying in the punt, fastened the painter.

"Oscar caught the train—and the psychological moment. Let's go in."

There was a deep sofa under the window, and she let herself sink into it, with her head upon a black velvet cushion. Her neck, from chin to the low collar of her dress, showed as a white curve. Kit stood by the window. The room seemed dim and shadowy, with the overcast evening sky, and the rain steaming down upon the river and the trees. An early and green twilight covered the earth.

"How it pours," she said.

One arm, bare to the elbow, lay along the top of the sofa, and Kit could see the movements of her dress as she breathed. Her eyes were half closed. There was something in her languor which gave him a feeling of breathlessness and wonder, for her very languor seemed to embody a secret expectancy. The dim light or some emotion had softened her face; her young fierceness lay relaxed.