Dusted with fine sand, two splendid bodies lay in a sort of natural covert between two low sandhills. That the sand clung in tiny patches to their liberally exposed skins was due not to a plunge into the nearby lake-for they had been no nearer the water than they now were-but rather to the fact that each of the pair had been moved to the excitement and warmth that induces a suffusing perspiration.
Rustling reeds raised about them an added cover and whispered, too, in a faint breeze which felt refreshing to both those sweating bodies as the pair rolled perhaps a foot apart, equivalent to a painful separation. But this separation would be atoned for in the not distant future by a renewed grapple, that was very sure!
One of the extended bodies was a great array of muscular limbs and frame weighing at least a hundred and ninety. This body could readily have spotted eighty pounds to the other body, which appeared hardly more than half its bulk.
The fact is, however, that it was only at this instant that a near-sighted observer would have been able to swear that the bodies were two in number instead of one. For the previous fifteen minutes, indeed, they had been the practical equivalent of just one rather extraordinarily shaped form, so closely, so unintermittently had they been clasped together, with the smaller body enfolded and sheltered by the massive frame of the larger one. “Oh-Stanley, Stanley, Stanley!”
This mere ghost of a voice could hardly have been heard farther than the ear to which it was addressed. “Well, Maro old sweetness!” murmured a masculine voice.
And the man, smiling gently and happily, touched softly with a fingertip two delicate buds which seemed to be trying to pierce, on the summits of twin breasts, the fine fabric which afforded the scantiest of covering.
Marion quivered. She withdrew another inch. And she whispered reproachfully, “Ah, but that at least is not a kiss-to touch me that way.”
“Well, those touches are mere admiring salutes to a bust so exquisite that it is a shame it should be ever hidden from the eyes which it would gladden so much,” said the man.
“It isn’t very much hidden now, I’m afraid,” the girl replied shamefacedly as she glanced downward for an instant. “But you shouldn’t even notice-or, at least, speak of-part of me like that. Though it’s nice of you to approve if you must speak.”
“It would be somewhat difficult,” he smiled, “not to approve of such utterly lovely and adorable little breasts as those. Still, I restrain my enthusiasm, since it abashes you, and I merely say that somewhere in the world there may be breasts as beautiful as yours, but that it is very doubtful. And the dainty nipples point silently at me as if in thanks for the kisses which have aroused them from their sleep.”
“You make it worse and worse every time you open your mouth,” she said, leaning a smooth brow against his shoulder. “What a topic to ask a girl to discuss with a man!…Did anybody ever tell you that you have the most even and attractive white teeth, Stanley?”
“The better to nibble you with, fairest of sister-in-laws,” he explained.
“I believe you really would chew me, monster! You must have done every other thing there is!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that! You seem to have a very erroneous idea of the extent of my repertoire. Indeed, I haven’t done a single thing since we came here except to kiss this rosy face, this sunny head, this soft neck, and these white shoulders and arms-kisses, I am forced to add, which it was difficult to get you to return.”
“There were other things too,” faltered Marion in the lowest of voices. “I shouldn’t have stayed-you know I should not.”
“Mere by-products-inevitable offshoots of our kisses,” he said. “And hence not in the least reprehensible even for my sensitive little novice.”
The girl drew a long breath which issued presently in soft sighs. “If we are to hug and kiss-if you are to hug and kiss-if you are to teach me all these startling things,” she began.
“All these detestable things?” he queried smilingly.
She laid her warm lips upon his brawny neck. “Don’t tease,” she whispered. “You know whether I detest them or not. But what I was going to say was that we should dress ourselves in real clothes for what Mildred calls spooning. It’s lovely, dear Stanley-yes, why should I be less than frank about an intense pleasure which you can very well see I experience? But hugging and rolling around so nearly unclad!”
“I would be keen to hug you even if clad in all sorts of things-with an opera cloak on top of them,” he said. “But the nearer I can get to the real you the pleasanter it is to embrace you.”
“Well, it drives me almost distracted. I don’t think I was wholly sane ten minutes ago,” she replied, with a candor that delighted him. “You see, our legs quite bare and our bodies tangled up and squirming-why, I had the most awful feeling all of a sudden that we were acting as even a husband and wife should be ashamed to act and I felt-I felt abashed and guilty to be enjoying so much of what conscience told me was wrong,” she said steadily. “And if it hadn’t been for what Mildred told me this morning after breakfast-“
“And that was?” he queried.
“She said I was too naive and unformed for words, that I positively needed to be taken in hand by a man who could be trusted not to go too far. That if I was ever to feel at ease at all among persons our age, I’d simply got to go a little pace with you since you were the only man ±n whom I was interested at all. And that since you were my relative, scandal couldn’t get at us.
“You see,” went on Marion rather breathlessly, “I suppose I was still rather flushed and upset-for you licked my lips you know you did-instead of just kissing me quite properly at breakfast time. And Mildred said she could have shaken me, that my timidity made even my own brother-in-law hesitant about taking me in his arms-and uncomfortable because I was so perturbed by a few little pettings. But you aren’t hesitant and uncomfortable, are you, Stanley?” “Not particularly,” he smiled briefly.
His companion mused in a rosy silence for a moment. “Mildred is simply a darling and I love her with all my heart,” she said at length. “But she does let her tongue gallop away with her once in a while, doesn’t she? She kept me as red as a peony for a while there. She scolded-not harshly, you understand, for she couldn’t be mean-because I refused last night to let you come into my room when she wanted to call you so that you could see my new gray silk combination. I wouldn’t have minded, Stanley, only I was in it at the time, trying it on, and it was every stitch I had on. So, you see, that would have been pretty terrible even for a nice brother, wouldn’t it? At least I thought so.
“And she said I had been silly to protest and run when she suggested after dinner last night that you should fix my garter. But how could I, Stanley let you do that? For it had come undone about my waist.” And she said that things that I thought hard and coarse and were just seasoning which teaches people to look with calm upon episodes which aren’t really of terrific importance-helping them to look, clear-eyed, on the facts of life. And she went on to say that it would be a good thing for me if some of these rapscallions of men got hold of me and tossed me in a blanket quite naked. Imagine-I know I should die! She was smiling, but I half think she meant it!”
“Some of them are quite capable of doing exactly that, small sister,” he laughed. “Especially with giggling girls and women to egg them on-and with a few drinks aboard each participant. In fact that and much more has been done on this very shore in the course of romps that tended to degenerate into revelry.”
The girl shuddered. She lessened the few inches which separated them. She snuggled a bit as if for protection against nameless outrages. “I shan’t dare go about here unless you are at hand,” she murmured. “I know you wouldn’t let them do such unspeakable things. Of course Mildred loves me whole-heartedly but somehow I feel that, if she got excited and mirthful, she might not protest in the least if they did the most terrible things to me!”