But if Alexander could be so indifferent, he could be determined and ardent.

"What's a little mirk and cold?
I want to say I've swum in it." He began to unbutton his waistcoat.
They stripped, left their clothes in the stone's keeping, and ran down the moorside.

The light played over their bodies, unblemished, smooth, and healthfully colored, clean-lined and rightly spare.

They had beautiful postures and movements when they stood, when they ran; a youthful and austere grace as of Spartan youth plunging down to the icy Eurotas.

The earth around lay as stripped as they; the naked, ineffable blue ether held them as it did all things; the wandering air broke against them in invisible surf.