In the morning she bathed in the sea while Wilhelm sat on the shore and watched her.  She swam like a fish; he could not swim at all.  She pledged her word to make him equally proficient in a few days, but her superiority made him feel small, and he would not accept her offer.  For twenty minutes she practiced her art in the water, lay on her back and on her side, turned somersaults, dived, trod the water and finally came out, like Venus newly risen from the waves, and joined Wilhelm, who was waiting for her with her bath-mantle.  He enveloped her in its soft folds, she roguishly shook the drops of water off her rosy finger-tips into his face and hurried to her bathing house without a glance for the spectators who had been watching her graceful play in the water, and devoured her with their eyes when she came on dry land.

The rest of the day was filled up by long walks broken by delightful rests under the shade of cornricks on grassy hillslopes beside some purling brook.  Then Pilar would sit on the rug or the camp stool, while Wilhelm lay at her feet with his head in her lap caressed by the little hands that played with his hair or wandered softly over his face, resting fondly on his lips for him to kiss.  If there were flowers within reach, she would pluck a quantity and strew his head and face with the fresh petals, while he gazed alternately into the blue summer sky and the bright brown eyes above him, or even closed his own for quarters of an hour of delicious dreaming.  Then everything outside his immediate surroundings would fade from his mind, and he would be conscious only of what was nearest to him, the faint scent of ylang-ylang that hovered round the beautiful woman, her smooth, caressing fingers, and the low sound of her deep, regular breathing.

“You are so handsome,” she whispered in his ear on one such occasion, and bending over him to kiss him; “do you know, I shall draw your portrait.”

“Can you draw?” he asked, raising himself on his elbow.

“I hardly know whether I ought to say yes,” she returned, with an arch, self-conscious smile that belied the humility of her tone.  “But you shall see.”

“Very well,” said he, “and while you are drawing my portrait I shall draw yours.”

“Bravo!” she cried, and wanted to go home at once, so that they might begin.

As was his custom, Wilhelm had all that was needful in his big trunk, and could supply Pilar with materials.  The next afternoon they set to work.  They established themselves in the middle of a great meadow, committing thereby an extreme act of trespass, and making their way to it over a ditch, a low wall, and through a blackberry hedge.  Here no prying eye would annoy them, their sole and most discreet spectator being Fido, and he was generally asleep.

Pilar had a drawing-block and used a pencil, Wilhelm sketched his picture on a page of a large album in colored chalks like a pastel.  She kept trying to peep at his work, but he would not allow it, and insisted on their making a compact not to look at one another’s work of art till it was finished.  Two sittings sufficed, however, and the portraits could be exchanged.  Pilar gave a cry of surprise when Wilhelm handed her his picture.