Hermione was powerful and unconscious in the water, large and slow and powerful.

Palestra was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered and flickered, a white natural shadow.

Then, one after the other, they waded out, and went up to the house.
But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.
'You don't like the water ?' he said.
She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin.
'I like it very much,' she replied.
He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.
'And you swim ?' 'Yes, I swim.' Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then.

He could feel something ironic in her.

He walked away, piqued for the first time.
'Why wouldn't you bathe ?' he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman.
She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.
'Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.
He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness.