She put out her hand and buried her fingers in the hair on the back of his bowed head.
He turned to her at once, and throwing an arm about her, grasped hers on the further side of him with a hot and nervous clutch. He nosed his face into her neck so that his hair tickled her cheek. And then he lay still, like a tired child, sure of its resting place.
Valerie drew a long breath and then exerted all her will power to drive back the excitement that heaved up inside her. She knew that Dane was not at that moment thinking of her as a woman at all. She had no illusions as to the possibility of his being a blazing and imperious lover when he was moved. But he was not a perennial dribbler of sensation, and something, she could not tell what, was holding him back.
So she sat very still herself, keeping her free hand away from his head, and trying to give him just the comfort of a presence that she felt he wanted. She tried to hold on to the sensation that the nestling of his head in her neck gave her. After a while he sat up suddenly, ran his hands through his hair, and looked for his pipe which he had put down in the sand.
Then he turned to her. “I say, I haven’t any business to be keeping you out like this. It must be very late. I’m very selfish.”
She felt an intense irritation, what at she did not know, and then she felt cold.
“Why, I’m not a child,” she said, with just a touch of sharpness in her tone. She sat up conscious again of a sense of frustration.
He filled his pipe slowly and began to smoke. It had grown cold and feeling it now she shivered. Dane got to his feet and held out his hands to her. She felt he was conscious of her drifting experimental mood, and that for
