'My love!' she cried, lifting her face and looking with frightened,
gentle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful
and soft and immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling
lightly to her, smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder,
hiding before him, because he could see her so completely. She knew he
loved her, and she was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new
heaven round about her. She wished he were passionate, because in
passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is
more frightening than force.
Again, quickly, she lifted her head.
'Do you love me?' she said, quickly, impulsively.
'Yes,' he replied, not heeding her motion, only her stillness.
She knew it was true. She broke away.
'So you ought,' she said, turning round to look at the road. 'Did you
find the rings?' 'Yes.' 'Where are they?' 'In my pocket.' She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.
She was restless.
'Shall we go?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left
behind them this memorable battle-field.
They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion
that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the
life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born
out of the cramp of a womb.
'Are you happy?' she asked him, in her strange, delighted way.
'Yes,' he said.
'So am I,' she cried in sudden ecstacy, putting her arm round him and
clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor-car.
'Don't drive much more,' she said. 'I don't want you to be always doing
something.' 'No,' he said. 'We'll finish this little trip, and then we'll be free.' 'We will, my love, we will,' she cried in delight, kissing him as he
turned to her.
He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his
consciousness broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body
awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as if he had just come
awake, like a thing that is born, like a bird when it comes out of an
egg, into a new universe.
They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula
recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of
Southwell Minster.
'Are we here!' she cried with pleasure.
The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the
coming night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed
like slabs of revelation, in the shop-windows.