So Dulcie took her first lesson under Garry's auspices; and she took to it naturally, her instinct being sound, but her technique as charmingly awkward as a young bird's in its first essay at flying.
To see her all in white, with sleeves tucked up, throat bare, and the sun brilliant on her ruddy, rippling hair, produced a curious impression on Barres. As far as the East is from the West, so far was this Dulcie of the tennis court separated from the wistful, shabby child behind the desk at Dragon Court.
Could they possibly be the same--this lithe, fresh, laughing girl, with white feet flashing and snowy skirts awhirl?--and the pale, grey-eyed slip of a thing that had come one day to his threshold with a faltering request for admittance to that wonderland wherein dwelt only such as he?
Now, those grey eyes had turned violet, tinged with the beauty of the open sky; the loosened hair had become a net entangling the very sunlight; and the frail body, now but one smooth, soft symmetry, seemed fairly lustrous with the shining soul it masked within it.
She came over to the net, breathless, laughing, to shake hands with her victorious opponents.
"I'm so sorry, Garry," she said, turning penitently to him, "but I need such a lot of help in the world before I'm worth anything to anybody."
"You're all right as you are. You always have been all right," he said in a low voice. "You never were worth less than you are worth now; you'll never be worth more than you are worth to me at this moment."
They were walking slowly across the lawn toward the northern veranda. She halted a moment on the grass and cast a questioning glance at him:
"Doesn't it please you to have me learn things?"
"I'm so glad.... I try.... But don't you think you'd like me better if I were not so ignorant?"
He looked at her absently, shook his head:
"No ... I couldn't like you better.... I couldn't care more--for any girl--than I care for you.... Did you suspect that, Dulcie?"
They moved slowly forward across the grass--he distrait, his handsome head lowered, swinging his tennis-bat as he walked; she very still and lithe and slender, moving beside him with lowered eyes fixed on their mingled shadows on the grass.
"When are you to see Mr. Skeel?" he asked abruptly.