"Do you want to marry me?" she asked slowly, always
uncertain.
He was afraid lest he could not speak. He drew breath hard,
saying: "I do."
Then again, what was agony to him, with one hand lightly
resting on his arm, she leaned forward a little, and with a
strange, primeval suggestion of embrace, held him her mouth. It
was ugly-beautiful, and he could not bear it. He put his mouth
on hers, and slowly, slowly the response came, gathering force
and passion, till it seemed to him she was thundering at him
till he could bear no more. He drew away, white, unbreathing.
Only, in his blue eyes, was something of himself concentrated.
And in her eyes was a little smile upon a black void.
She was drifting away from him again. And he wanted to go
away. It was intolerable. He could bear no more. He must go. Yet
he was irresolute. But she turned away from him.
With a little pang of anguish, of denial, it was decided.
"I'll come an' speak to the vicar to-morrow," he said, taking
his hat.
She looked at him, her eyes expressionless and full of
darkness. He could see no answer.
"That'll do, won't it?" he said.
"Yes," she answered, mere echo without body or meaning.
"Good night," he said.
"Good night."
He left her standing there, expressionless and void as she
was. Then she went on laying the tray for the vicar. Needing the
table, she put the daffodils aside on the dresser without
noticing them. Only their coolness, touching her hand, remained
echoing there a long while.
They were such strangers, they must for ever be such
strangers, that his passion was a clanging torment to him. Such
intimacy of embrace, and such utter foreignness of contact! It
was unbearable. He could not bear to be near her, and know the
utter foreignness between them, know how entirely they were
strangers to each other. He went out into the wind. Big holes
were blown into the sky, the moonlight blew about. Sometimes a
high moon, liquid-brilliant, scudded across a hollow space and
took cover under electric, brown-iridescent cloud-edges. Then
there was a blot of cloud, and shadow. Then somewhere in the
night a radiance again, like a vapour. And all the sky was
teeming and tearing along, a vast disorder of flying shapes and
darkness and ragged fumes of light and a great brown circling
halo, then the terror of a moon running liquid-brilliant into
the open for a moment, hurting the eyes before she plunged under
cover of cloud again.