“That stuff there,” she answered, looking forward to the group of chairs.
“Why, that’s just refuse from the galley,” Mr. Talliaferro said with surprise.
“Is it? It’s kind of funny looking. . . . There’s some more of it down here a ways.” Mr. Talliaferro followed her, intrigued and curious. She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder and beyond him: Mr. Talliaferro aped her but saw no living thing except Mark Frost on the edge of the group. The others were out of sight beyond the deckhouse. “It’s farther on,” Jenny said.
Further along she stopped again and again she looked forward. “Where?” Mr. Talliaferro asked.
“Here.” Jenny stared at the lake a moment. Then she examined the deck again. Mr. Talliaferro was thoroughly puzzled now, even a trifle alarmed. “It was right here, that funny thing I saw. I guess it’s gone, though.”
“What was it you saw?”
“Some kind of a funny thing,” she answered with detachment. . . . “The sun is hot here.” Jenny moved away and went to where an angle of the deckhouse wall formed a shallow niche. Mr. Talliaferro followed her in amazement. Again Jenny peered around him, examining that part of the deck which was in sight and the immediate approaches to it. Then she became utterly static beside him and without moving at all she seemed to envelop him, giving him to think of himself surrounded, enclosed by the sweet cloudy fire of her thighs, as young girls can.
Mr. Talliaferro saw her as through a blonde mist. A lightness was moving down his members, a lightness so exquisite as to be almost unbearable, while above it all he listened to the dry interminable incoherence of his own voice. That unbearable lightness moved down his arms to his hands, and
