Her hair was yellow. Benis had been insistent in pointing
out that when he said "yellow" he did not mean goldish or bronze, or
fawn-colored or tow-colored or Titian, but just yellow. "Do you see
that patch of sky over there where the mountain dips?" he had said.
"Mary's hair was yellow, like that."
That patch of sky, as Desire remembered it, was very beautiful.
Quite too beautiful to be compared to any-one's hair. No doubt it
was only in Benis's imagination that Mary's hair was anything like
it.
But nevertheless it was there that the world had gone wrong. It was
while Benis had sat gazing into that patch of amber sky that Desire,
gazing too, had, for the first time, realized the Other. Up until
then, Mary had been an abstraction--thenceforth she was a
personality. That made all the difference. Desire, throwing shells
at crabs, admitted that, for her, there had been no Mary until she
had heard that her hair was yellow.
It was ridiculous but it was true. Mary without hair had been a
gentle and retiring shade. A phantom in whom it had been possible to
take an academic interest. But no shade has a right to hair like an
amber sunset. Desire threw a shell viciously. Very little more, she
felt, and she would positively dislike Mary!
She jumped up and stamped in the shallow water. The crabs, big and
little, scuttled away.
"Hurr-ee!" called the professor waving a frying-pan.
"Com-ing!" Desire's voice rose gaily.
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