"And who did you see?"
"I saw nobody."
"Nobody?"
"No--who should I see?"
"You saw nobody you knew?"
"No, I didn't," he replied irritably.
She believed him, and her mood became cold.
"I bought a book," he said, handing her the propitiatory
volume.
She idly looked at the pictures. Beautiful, the pure women,
with their clear-dropping gowns. Her heart became colder. What
did they mean to him?
He sat and waited for her. She bent over the book.
"Aren't they nice?" he said, his voice roused and glad. Her
blood flushed, but she did not lift her head.
"Yes," she said. In spite of herself, she was compelled by
him. He was strange, attractive, exerting some power over
her.
He came over to her, and touched her delicately. Her heart
beat with wild passion, wild raging passion. But she resisted as
yet. It was always the unknown, always the unknown, and she
clung fiercely to her known self. But the rising flood carried
her away.
They loved each other to transport again, passionately and
fully.
"Isn't it more wonderful than ever?" she asked him, radiant
like a newly opened flower, with tears like dew.
He held her closer. He was strange and abstracted.
"It is always more wonderful," she asseverated, in a glad,
child's voice, remembering her fear, and not quite cleared of it
yet.
So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and
conflict between them. One day it seemed as if everything was
shattered, all life spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste.
The next day it was all marvellous again, just marvellous. One
day she thought she would go mad from his very presence, the
sound of his drinking was detestable to her. The next day she
loved and rejoiced in the way he crossed the floor, he was sun,
moon and stars in one.
She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability.
When the perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget that
they would pass away again. She was uneasy. The surety, the
surety, the inner surety, the confidence in the abidingness of
love: that was what she wanted. And that she did not get. She
knew also that he had not got it.
Nevertheless it was a marvellous world, she was for the most
part lost in the marvellousness of it. Even her great woes were
marvellous to her.
She could be very happy. And she wanted to be happy. She
resented it when he made her unhappy. Then she could kill him,
cast him out. Many days, she waited for the hour when he would
be gone to work. Then the flow of her life, which he seemed to
damn up, was let loose, and she was free. She was free, she was
full of delight. Everything delighted her. She took up the rug
and went to shake it in the garden. Patches of snow were on the
fields, the air was light. She heard the ducks shouting on the
pond, she saw them charge and sail across the water as if they
were setting off on an invasion of the world. She watched the
rough horses, one of which was clipped smooth on the belly, so
that he wore a jacket and long stockings of brown fur, stand
kissing each other in the wintry morning by the church-yard
wall. Everything delighted her, now he was gone, the insulator,
the obstruction removed, the world was all hers, in connection
with her.