He was hot all at once, and thirsty for the water they carried up the slope to the parched ground.
She understood what he was trying to tell her . . . she had caught a magnificence, a splendor, that was not to be put into words. He wasn't afraid any more, or shy. It was as if she existed in an aura of contagious lawlessness.
She took out a cigarette from a lacquered box. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
"No."
"I didn't know. . . ."
He watched her curiously. There lay in the soft curve of her body, in the long slim leg crossed over the other, in the curve of the fur thrown back across her shoulders, in the poise of her arm, all the perfection of some composition designed and executed by a great artist. It was a kind of perfection he had never dreamed of, something which had arisen mysteriously during years out of the curious charm of her own personality. It was, too, a completeness born of the fearlessness which he had sensed for a moment by the window. Suddenly he thought, "Some day I shall be of that world. I shall succeed and become great. And Mary, too, will share it."
He had almost forgotten Mary, but it was only, he told himself shamefully, because she had been there with him all the while. It was almost as if she were a part of himself: whatever happened to him must happen also to her. It was not that he had fallen in love with this stranger, or even that he desired her: the emotion was something far beyond all that, a sort of dazzled bewilderment shot through with streaks of hope and
