The Trespasser

When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards

something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him

with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he

received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and

the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It

is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little

flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In

these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards

something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in

this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.

'Will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over.

'I don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she

did not care at all. 'I think it will be a mixed day--cloud and

sun--more sun than cloud.' She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at

the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.

'I like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about

as you walk.' 'It is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled.

'Ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation

from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena's. She laughed,

and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an

hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till

Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that

wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold.

Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But

psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.

They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point

of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the

inscription.

'That's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed Siegmund.

'Oh, they'd have to fence in Lord Tennyson's white marble,' said Helena,

rather indefinitely.

He interpreted her according to his own idea.

'Yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said Siegmund.

'Tennyson!' she exclaimed.

'Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.' 'I shouldn't say so,' she declared.

He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.

They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed

the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the

sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below

the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose

over the cliff's edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped

in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds

passing in and out of the cliff shelter.