The Trespasser

Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven

o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.

'But it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of

the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted

hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.

The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that

his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium

glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of

the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,

offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the

brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him

with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.

'They are all extraordinarily sweet,' said Siegmund to the full-mouthed

scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies

fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.

Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.

'The careless little beggars!' he said.

When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely

dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to

meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of

diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund

had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and

everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to

us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break

our hearts.

'We have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say.

Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.

'It is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.' So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last

night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed

by his usual altar-stone.

'How closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'It seems almost as if

the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.' He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering

fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his

own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with

things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and

seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath

his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with

wondering pleasure.