'Come to think of it,' Siegmund continued, 'I have always shirked.
Whenever I've been in a tight corner I've gone to Pater.' 'I think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get
out of to go to anybody.' 'Yet I'm here,' he answered simply.
The blood suffused her face and neck.
'And some men would have made a better job of it. When it's come to
sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of
her, I've always funked. I tell you I'm something of a moral coward.' He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'So be it.'
Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
finally--Siegmund.
'In my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'I
might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies
running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I
am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.' 'You are so hard to get at,' said Siegmund. 'And so scornful of familiar
things.' She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her
whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
after moments of intense living.
The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash,
and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong
again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a
destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed
back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against
her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty,
mean conclusions.