In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
* * * * * It was eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and
rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
tossed in restlessness on his breast.
'Am I not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
gently.
'It is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. She had lain tranquil
with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in
his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from
an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and
hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic,
as if he would destroy her.
She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to
produce him.
Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in
his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and
unbearable to herself.
At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
pushed back the curtain.
The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea,
and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution
on her brow.
'Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?' she asked fretfully.
'Ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.