“You look as cool as a wave,” he said, reaching out for the hand on her knee.  She let him have it, and he drew it closer, scrutinizing it as if it had been a bit of precious porcelain or ivory.  It was small and soft, a mere featherweight, a puff-ball of a hand—­not quick and thrilling, not a speaking hand, but one to be fondled and dressed in rings, and to leave a rosy blur in the brain.  The fingers were short and tapering, dimpled at the base, with nails as smooth as rose-leaves.  Ralph lifted them one by one, like a child playing with piano-keys, but they were inelastic and did not spring back far—­only far enough to show the dimples.

He turned the hand over and traced the course of its blue veins from the wrist to the rounding of the palm below the fingers; then he put a kiss in the warm hollow between.  The upper world had vanished:  his universe had shrunk to the palm of a hand.  But there was no sense of diminution.  In the mystic depths whence his passion sprang, earthly dimensions were ignored and the curve of beauty was boundless enough to hold whatever the imagination could pour into it.  Ralph had never felt more convinced of his power to write a great poem; but now it was Undine’s hand which held the magic wand of expression.

She stirred again uneasily, answering his last words with a faint accent of reproach.

“I don’t feel cool.  You said there’d be a breeze up here.”.

He laughed.

“You poor darling!  Wasn’t it ever as hot as this in Apex?”

She withdrew her hand with a slight grimace.

“Yes—­but I didn’t marry you to go back to Apex!”

Ralph laughed again; then he lifted himself on his elbow and regained the hand.  “I wonder what you did marry me for?”

“Mercy!  It’s too hot for conundrums.”  She spoke without impatience, but with a lassitude less joyous than his.

He roused himself.  “Do you really mind the heat so much?  We’ll go, if you do.”

She sat up eagerly.  “Go to Switzerland, you mean?”

“Well, I hadn’t taken quite as long a leap.  I only meant we might drive back to Siena.”

She relapsed listlessly against her tree-trunk.  “Oh, Siena’s hotter than this.”

“We could go and sit in the cathedral—­it’s always cool there at sunset.”

“We’ve sat in the cathedral at sunset every day for a week.”

“Well, what do you say to stopping at Lecceto on the way?  I haven’t shown you Lecceto yet; and the drive back by moonlight would be glorious.”

This woke her to a slight show of interest.  “It might be nice—­but where could we get anything to eat?”

Ralph laughed again.  “I don’t believe we could.  You’re too practical.”

“Well, somebody’s got to be.  And the food in the hotel is too disgusting if we’re not on time.”

“I admit that the best of it has usually been appropriated by the extremely good-looking cavalry-officer who’s so keen to know you.”