All of which was but the sentimentalism which appertains to a man and a
woman in love with each other, but the drift of thought continued in
the direction suggested by his action and her comment. They looked at
the lake, with its shifting coloring of green and blue and purple, and
he told her how, some day, he would teach her to swim like a Sandwich
Island beauty, and she said she would like to learn. She liked the
water.
"I'm very glad of that," he commented; "I like it myself. I am a great
bather. I admire the English for the 'tubbing' which is made such a
subject of jest against them by other people. There must be water into
which I may tumble when I rise in the morning, or water in abundance in
some way, else I should be a trifle uncomfortable all day long. I
don't mean just a mild lavatory business, you know, but a plunge or a
cataract, or something of that sort. It is barely possible, my dear,
that you are going to marry a man whose remote ancestors were the
product of evolution from otters, instead of monkeys. Think of that!"
And she confessed, half-blushingly, her own regard for water, and that
she had been laughed at by other women for what they deemed a fancy
carried to an extreme. And she said she was very glad that a great big
Somebody was dainty in his ways. While in many respects she could not
approve of him, it was a comfort, at least, to be enabled to think of
him as ever clean and wholesome, and as having one weakness of which
she could condone.
He looked at her majesty, as she sat enthroned upon a little mound, but
to her small oration made no reply. He was worshiping her bodily. And
from this conversation came a sequel, a day or two later, which was but
the worshiping put into things material. Of his love and the bath he
would have fancies, and he wanted what touched her to be from him. She
was surprised by a cumbrous package which, opened, revealed great
things for a woman's dalliance with water--the soft Turkish towel, vast
enough to envelop her, the perfumed soaps, and even the bath-mittens.
And she was a little frightened, maybe, at the personality of it all,
but she recognized the nature of his fancy, and but loved him the more
because he had it. It was an odd gift, it is true, but they were odd
people. They were very close together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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