The Trespasser

The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,

was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the

door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the

garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat

sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little

laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very

still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant

little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood

cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green

twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There

was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the

shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,

leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.

She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she

discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next

mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.

She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.

She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine

at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.

When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing: 'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.' She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She

glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.

'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost

sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.

Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few

moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said: 'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim

there.' 'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.

'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.

She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration

came into her voice.

'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.

He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and

still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that

would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all

swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found

himself saying: 'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like

Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.' 'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at him

with her eyes heavy with meaning.