_"The rain was now coming down in torrents"_ was the first sentence which
met her glance. She read the phrase over two or three times as though it
were some abstruse statement in mathematics. Its incongruousness annoyed
her. It was nonsense for any one to write like that. Why, it was so hot...
so hot that... The book, falling from her hand, slipped over the side of
the hammock and dropped almost soundlessly on to the thick turf below.
The next thing of which she was conscious was of waking suddenly to the
sound of a crisp masculine voice remarking succinctly and on a note of
intense astonishment:
"Well, I'm hanged!"
Ann stirred and rather unwillingly opened her eyes to find herself gazing
straight up into other eyes so vividly blue as to be almost startling. They
were looking down at her with a mixture of amusement and unmistakable
admiration.
"I've been asleep," she said unnecessarily, still hardly thoroughly awake.
"You have," agreed the owner of the blue eyes. "And I very nearly took the
usual privilege accorded to the prince who's told off to waken the sleeping
beauty."
At that Arm woke up very completely. The speech savoured of impertinence,
and she resented it accordingly, yet it had been so gaily uttered, with a
sort of confiding audacity which appeared to take it for granted that she
would not be offended, that she found it difficult to feel as righteously
indignant as the occasion merited.
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