The Trespasser
D.H. Lawrence




THE TRESPASSER

By D. H. Lawrence



1912



_Chapter 1_


'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.

Helena looked slowly from her music.

'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
forbearance.

'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'

'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
her bristling defiance.

'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
like it.'

'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
chords, and the music continued.

A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
in the room.

It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
were smooth white. There was no other colouring.

The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
skirting-board, serene.

On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.

A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.

The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
turned again to the players.

The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.

Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
and glisten over her forehead.

Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.

'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'

Helena laughed wearily.

'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
rest.

'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
passionately.

'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
apathetic tone. 'It was I.'

When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
were coaxing a child:

'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'

'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
for years.

'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.

Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.

'They are inflamed still' said the young man.

She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
lighting up with a small smile.

'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
smarting soft flesh caressively.

'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
peculiar joy.

'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
anything on to heal it?'

She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
the burn.

'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
joy.

'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'

She looked up at him, suddenly cold.

'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.

The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'

'Never?' he re-echoed.

There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
to play the piano for their benefit. At last:

'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.

The two looked up at her.

'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.

'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.

'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.

'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
obligation _whatever_.'

With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.

The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
one spoke.

At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
position. She sat motionless.

'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
at her friend, and stretched slightly.

'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'

'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.

'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
appealing love.

Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.

'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.

'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'

'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.

The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
an end.

'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
you've got to live.'

Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.

'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.

'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
grinning.

She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.

'I don't see it at all,' she said.

'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'

'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
myself, why trouble, my friend?'

'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'

She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'

'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.

'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'

'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
looked in the fire, forgetting him.

'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.

She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
broke out once more.

'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
not dead....'

Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
look became distressed and helpless.

'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'

With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.

'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
never touch the thing,' he cried.

'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
life. She was very sick after the tragedy.

He frowned, and his eyes dilated.

'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'

She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
moving from her torpor was painful. At last--

'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.

'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
softly, wearily.

For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.

'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
arrival of Louisa with the coffee.



_Chapter 2_


Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
it; she kept the black case out of sight.

Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
odour of must.

Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
remained of him in his violin.

It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
wild in anticipation.

The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.

The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
flame stretched level on the wind.

With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
fascinated.

This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.

He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.

When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
was changing.

The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
black masses of the trees.

He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.

In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
looked round with disgust.

The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
He fetched a glass of water.

The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
slippers; and he was in evening dress.

It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
wishing he had no tomorrow.

Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
absurd arms to him.

He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.

Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
two girls.

As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
full of youth.

He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.

Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
beautiful things and of dreams.

The clock downstairs struck two.

'I must get to sleep,' he said.

He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.

'I am fearfully tired,' he said.

But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.

'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
child!' He began to muse of the morrow.

When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.

Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
not been in the room.

Helena stood fingering the score of _Pelléas_. When Vera had gone, she
asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:

'Why do you consider the music of _Pelléas_ cold?'

Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating;
and to her much was humiliating.

For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.

Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
he had lost himself to her.

That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at
him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot
come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had
writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to you.' Then she left him.

Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when
he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:

'You are so tired, Siegmund.' She stroked his face, and kissed him
softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
ugly for Siegmund.

'You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
week in August.'

His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
Isle of Wight, tomorrow.

Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
flooded him....

But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes,
and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had
been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:

'I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.'

She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
from his children.

Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.

In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she
lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.

'I am nothing, I am nothing,' she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
for a time.

There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.

'God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!' she said aloud,
in a low tone. She hated Helena.

Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.



_Chapter 3_


In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund's shadows, his children,
Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young
man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
he looked out of the carriage window.

Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter
of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park.
People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It
was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.

Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced
lightly in the sunshine.

And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
glistened on her uncovered hair.

He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on, drawing
near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was so like
Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.

Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out,
and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. All
his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece
of colour.

The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a
bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.

Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the
blue sea gathering round.

On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
crimson-winged boats.

Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women
in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible.
Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand
the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath
him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In
front, Sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him,
bringing him Helena.

Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the
fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he
watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud
cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
chill wind.

His travelling was very slow. The sky's dark shipping pressed closer and
closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands
near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All
the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the
wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station and the island were
desolate, having lost their purposes.

Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning's blaze of
elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the
intoxication was dying out.

At three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred
dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the
reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly
torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was
thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
felt dead.

The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under
the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund's heart
leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of
Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into
the carriage.

'You _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund's
question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in
to him.

'Is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.

Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.

'Here we are, then!' exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
his luggage.

Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
astonished cries of delight.

When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naïve
look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
his knees.

For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.

Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
Siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.

'What is it?' he asked, listening uneasily.

Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
look of distress amused her.

'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
Siegfried's dragon....'

The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
amused her. But he was tired.

'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.

'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'

'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
across the sea to Tristan.'

She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
horn-call.

'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.

'This time next week, Helena!' he said.

She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
lay upon the table.

'I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,' she said.

He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
leaving him inwardly quite lonely.

'There is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'There
is only the present.'

At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed
against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint,
intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to
himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with
gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face
upon her.

She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his
forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.

Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
future in a passion worth years of living.

After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful
things she had found. She had a woman's curious passion for details, a
woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened,
smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed
him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended
to her words.

'Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired--you are very
tired,' said Helena.

She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.

'No,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.'

Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.

'You must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face,
ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself
up against the fog.

'You are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated.

He laughed.

Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
overcoat, while they walked together.

'I like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.

'I don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him.

'It puts us together by ourselves,' he said. She plodded alongside,
bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.

'It couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said.

She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.

'Why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.

'There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
me--look!'

He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.

In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
They turned from it.

'What is the pitch?' asked Helena.

'Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,' said Siegmund.

'Yes, but the settled pitch--is it about E?'

'E!' exclaimed Siegmund. 'More like F.'

'Nay, listen!' said Helena.

They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
fog-horn.

'There!' exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. 'That is not E.' He
repeated the sound. 'It is F.'

'Surely it is E,' persisted Helena.

'Even F sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note.

She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.

'But you agree?' he said.

'I do not,' she replied.

The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.

'What is the note in _Tristan_?' Helena made an effort to ask.

'That is not the same,' he replied.

'No, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. He
quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
down the fog.

As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely
to itself.

Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.

'Shall we walk over, then?' said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena's
heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
afraid of him just then.

'Come away, dear,' she pleaded.

He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
to think so.

'Come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.

'You are not afraid?' he asked.

'Not afraid, no....' Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
that made him shiver.

'It is too easy a way,' he said satirically.

She did not take in his meaning.

'And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!' she scolded. 'The mist
is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.'

He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.

They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.

As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went
flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western
sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the
golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena
that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber
of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun
was departing with pomp.

Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming
bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express
it; how other men had borne this same glory.

'What is the music of it?' he asked.

She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
open, as if in ironic rhapsody.

'Of what, dear?'

'What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?'

His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
moment.

'I do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
shoulder, looking out west.

There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.

'A Beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her.

She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.

'The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,' she decided.

'Yes,' said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
almost put her two hands over his eyes.



_Chapter 4_


The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her
in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he
bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with
fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again.
He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it
was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his
breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that
moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face
on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried
against her soft strong throat.

'You are so big I can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching
her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
shoulders ineffectually.

'You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,' he whispered.

He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast
with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands
meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.

'See! I can't,' she whispered.

He laughed short, and pressed her closer.

Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
one great ache.

He crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious
of nothing.

She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
her breast.

Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one
being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.

When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the
mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man's brightness
and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
bed. She lay still on Siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily
beating heart.

With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was
very cruel.

He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more
detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been
rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract,
and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is
full of cruelty.

Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
some time.

She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
child whom she must correct and lead:

'I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.' He made a small sound, that
might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out
of it.

'It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly.

'Soon,' he said thickly.

She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath
to take him from his pleasure:

'Siegmund, I am cold.'

There was a reproach in this which angered him.

'Cold!' he exclaimed. 'But you are warm with me--'

'But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.'

'Oh dear!' he said. 'Why didn't you give them me to warm?' He leaned
forward, and put his hand on her shoes.

'They are very cold,' he said. 'We must hurry and make them warm.'

When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
clung to Siegmund, laughing.

'I wish you had told me before,' he said. 'I ought to have known....'

Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.



_Chapter 5_


They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
the sake of having visitors, than for gain.

Helena introduced Siegmund as 'My friend'. The old lady smiled upon him.
He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years
back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house
for their honeymoon.

Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
scarcely adjust the wicks.

Helena left the room to change her dress.

'I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
Nietzsche I brought--'

He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms
along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his
being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came
up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in
the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and
he smiled.

When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent,
so strange.

Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six
to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and
looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam
to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear
through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But
her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared
not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He
strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put
out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for
her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She
waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not
look at her.

'You would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark
hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
setting of his shoulders.

'Just as you will,' he replied.

Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled
him, she thought. He was foreign to her.

'I will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation.
She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice,
but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.

In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace,
and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and
fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded.
It was a physical pain to him.

Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident
to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.

At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.

'Will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady.

'Nothing at all, thanks,' said Helena, with decision.

'Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I've washed the dishes. You will
put the lamp out, dear?'

'I am well used to a lamp,' smiled Helena. 'We use them always at home.'

She had had a day before Siegmund's coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss'
heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.

'Good-night, dear--good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
long, dear?'

'No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.'

'Yes--yes. It is very tiring, London.'

When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking
in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to
glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
disappointed eyes.

'Shall I read to you?' she asked bitterly.

'If you will,' he replied.

He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.

'What is it, dear?' she said.

'You,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace.

'Why me?'

He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.

He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.

After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and
went to the door.

'Shall I let her out?' said Siegmund.

'Do!' said Helena, slipping from his knee. 'She goes out when the nights
are fine.'

Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
Curtiss called from upstairs: 'Is that you, dear?'

'I have just let Kitty out,' said Siegmund.

'Ah, thank you. Good night!' They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
door.

Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then
waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.

'Shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively.

'Yes--If you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
was burning and surging with desire.

The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
advanced out of the shadows.

He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt
on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread
towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely
able to move.

'Come,' he pleaded softly.

She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her
uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.

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.

They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the
casement of the land seductively.

'It's the finest night I have seen,' said Siegmund. Helena's eyes
suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.

'I like the moon on the water,' she said.

'I can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'The sea
seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
are all you.'

'Yes,' she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
now, and did not need her.

'I feel at home here,' he said; 'as if I had come home where I was
bred.'

She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.

'We go an awful long way round, Helena,' he said, 'just to find we're
all right.' He laughed pleasantly. 'I have thought myself such an
outcast! How can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always
naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?'

Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
something of the harmony.

'Whatever I have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a
sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house,
you see.'

'And I, Siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit
ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed,
then bent to kiss her.

'The key of the castle,' he said. He put his face against hers, and felt
on his cheek the smart of her tears.

'It's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for
tonight, all this that I say.'

'It is true for ever,' she declared.

'In so far as tonight is eternal,' he said.

He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from
under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.



_Chapter 6_


Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'It is like the magic tales,'
he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and I am transported to a new
life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.'

He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand,
he felt for his watch. It was seven o'clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched
night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.

The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows
in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine;
milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the
sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.

Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.

There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and
down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the
wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He
took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and
pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.

Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
swinging birds.

He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
heavy green water.

It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear
green water.

He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.

With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the
morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
liked to see the birds come down.

But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the
pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it,
but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.

When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against
him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion.
The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm
breath. He delighted in himself.

The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.

'She would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he
smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
itself redly round the rise of his knee.

'That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
a person. What makes me myself, among all these?'

Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.

'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
a baboon under my clothing.'

He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.

'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
thought.

He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.

'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
was his physical self thinking.

After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.

'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.

'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
brine in his hair.

'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--'

Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.

'It _is_ blood?' she said.

'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.

'Are you sure?'

He laughed.

'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.

'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.

She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.

'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.

'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?'

She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.

'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.

Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.

'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
eat.

'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?'

'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
sleeplessness.

'I haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena
smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
winking a golden eye at her.

After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric
yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
than imagination.

She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's
previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower's name,
nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
everything in fancy.

'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
before dawn came. It is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. The pink
convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.

Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
water-shadowed reefs.

'This is very good,' she said to herself. 'This is eternally cool, and
clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.'

She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away
the soiling of the last night's passion.

The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
self-sufficient and careless of the rest.

Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
watched the water playing.

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.

These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
to risk it.

'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
sweeping, and dark.

Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.

She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.

Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:

'They look so fine down there.'

He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
as he gripped her.

They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
'Path of the Hundred Steps'.

'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
laughed at his exactitude.

'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.

'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.

'Or of exaggeration,' he added.

There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
side by side.

They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.

'Now, that one with the greyish sails--' Siegmund was saying.

'Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?'
interrupted Helena.

'That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and--'

He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
wicked laughter of Helena.

'That is right, I am sure,' he protested.

'I won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.

'So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he
said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked
at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in
the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.

Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
startled them up.

'The clouds are coming,' he said regretfully.

'Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered,

'Look at the shadows--like blots floating away. Don't they devour the
sunshine?'

'It is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him.

'Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.'

'No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.'

'I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
sunshine.'

She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund's face. He lay, with
half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with
her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He
lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.

Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the
sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It
seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it
fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had
the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding
out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her.
This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so
different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome,
shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be
the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves.
She listened for Siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other
sound, thudding powerfully.



_Chapter 7_


Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across
at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.

'I suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!'

'I was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled.

They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the
water and the downs.

The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
bay.

'The tide is coming in,' said Helena.

'But this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. It's as soft
as pepper,' he replied.

They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and
fell, overcome at the end of the race.

Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its
base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green
sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of
withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that
glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were
almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the other
headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must hurry,
or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining
between the great wall and the water.

The cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless.
He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded
by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.

'I think I will rest awhile,' she said.

'No, come along,' he begged.

'My dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
from the sea.'

He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
It would be ridiculous to be trapped.

'Look at this black wood,' she said. 'Does the sea really char it?'

'Let us get round the corner,' he begged.

'Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said
ironically.

When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
was delighted.

'This is fine, Siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west.

Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from
their feet.

'Would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked.

She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:

'This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.'

'And then where?'

'Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.'

'Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.'

She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
near their bases.

'I suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began
silently to clamber forwards.

He followed; she should set the pace.

'I have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'The sea only
looks near.'

But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were cut
off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
his face.

Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of
a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not bear.
She had no weapon against brute force.

She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.

Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.

When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
week--well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.

And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest
tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why
was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of
experience? She was young and naïve, and should he be angry with her for
that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would have to
suffer also, because of him.

He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.

They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
heaving, warm, deliciously strong.

Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.

They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
satisfaction.

'It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said,
startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like
a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said
it. He pressed his mouth on hers. 'Not for you,' he thought, by reflex.
'You can't go that way yet.' But he said nothing, strained her very
tightly, and kept her lips.

They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light
bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand
to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing
delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness.

'Isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'The sea must be very,
very gentle--and very kind.'

'Sometimes,' smiled Siegmund.

'But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. She
breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
inhaled its fine savour.

'It would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. She looked at him
with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the
glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
waited upon her words and movements attentively.

'It is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'Wotan is so
clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--'

Helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
not lucid.

'But life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled
softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
her words.

'There's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only
way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
forget he had spoken.

There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:

'I will give it to the children,' he said.

She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.

Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.

'Would you like this? I found it down there,' said Siegmund, offering
her the bulb.

She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
she was not going to say anything.

'The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,'
said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.

The girl looked at her.

'The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
fingers--'

The child's eyes brightened.

'The tide-line is full of treasures,' said Helena, smiling.

The child answered her smile a little.

Siegmund had walked away.

'What beautiful eyes she had!' said Helena.

'Yes,' he replied.

She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.



_Chapter 8_


The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken
and trees.

They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
under the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All the
yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.

The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.

She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.

As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light
swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of
their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.

They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.

As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
and to strike a last blow for her pride:

'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'

'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
him, and she wanted to possess him.

The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.

That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
Her soul seemed blasted.

At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.

She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as
they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued
flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.

Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against
the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was
flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a
heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air
of sunshine.

She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the
waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her
feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as
the breast of a white bird.

Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along
with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,
large birds inhabiting an empty sea.

Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
like pale flowers trembling upward.

'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressed
forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had
more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his
arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.

There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.

He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its
cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that
was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling
with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible
sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom
that had waited, how long, for its bee.

The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.

'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his hands
again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,
gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth
warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand
encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end he
found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his
hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy
coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and
kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a
flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth
of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness
and warmth merely floated upon.

Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he
should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He
tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry and
warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of
himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found
himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his
head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his
hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if
he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and
sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happy
priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out
of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach
it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean he
felt--full of lightness and grace.

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.

He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.

'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.

The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
it. He became suddenly grave.

'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. It
is so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
you think so?'

Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,
and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.



_Chapter 9_


The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,
which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.

'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.

'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
them--dimly, drowsily, without pain.

They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path
down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with
ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.
The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks
of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena
sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand
till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then
she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the
light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal
beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on
the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.

For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then there
settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down
together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund
with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in his
shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.
The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds
asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them
with its bright eyes.

Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall
at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came
like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of
beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of
others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and
bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such
blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in
His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid
blooms of beauty.

A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung
into water. She shivered lightly and rose.

Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.
She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in
the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it
free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens
itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers the
tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and took
its kisses on her face and throat.

Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:

'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'

'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.

For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.

'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.

He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.



_Chapter 10_


Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed
suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund's heart was
leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself
very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled slowly. Often she
called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky
with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but
shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to
poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a
shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones,
causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the
cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and
gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two
miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone,
dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet
of the weeds.

'Don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said.

She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
childishly happy.

'Why should we?' she asked lightly.

He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy
with the individual, no cognizance of him.

She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things.
She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful,
fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below
consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic
knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To
Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her
kaleidoscope.

So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.

'Come,' he said very gently. 'You are only six years old today.'

She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling
in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in
him sadly alive.

'Now put your stockings on,' he said.

'But my feet are wet.' She laughed.

He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and
more golden.

'I envy the savages their free feet,' she said.

'There is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,'
he replied.

As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys
emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them.
The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:

'Tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?'

'Ay, let her have a run,' said the father.

Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
pathetically.

'Go on, Tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'Go on; have a run on
the sand.'

The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps,
turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It
looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away
from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves.

Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
watching the kitten and smiling.

'Crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said.

'But look how frightened it is,' she said.

'So am I.' He laughed. 'And if there are any gods looking on and
laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their
pinafores....'

She laughed very quickly.

'But why?' she exclaimed. 'Why should you want putting in a pinafore?'

'I don't,' he laughed.

On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
glowing. He was watching earnestly.

'I want to absorb it all,' he said.

When at last they turned away:

'Yes,' said Helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the
atmosphere.'

He pondered a moment.

'How strange!' he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail.
It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture
was in me, not out there.'

Without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it
verbiage--she made a small sound of assent.

'That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don't care so much,
because I have it with me,' he concluded.



_Chapter 11_


They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.

Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.

'We must go to the left,' said Helena.

To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
shoulders.

Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
sense of space and freedom.

'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
shaggy cloak of furze.

'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.

But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.

'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
will be tired.'

She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
the condition of intense waiting.

He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.

'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.'

'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.

'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.

They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.

Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.

'What day is it, Siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
laughed, understanding, and kissed her.

'But really,' she insisted, 'I would not have believed the labels could
have fallen off everything like this.'

He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.

'The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
order and costume, going endlessly round.' She laughed, amused at
the idea.

'It is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights
smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
lifetime.'

'That is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'You have
torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be
parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up
of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take
no notice.'

She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his
leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from
pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek,
looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a
keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.

'You know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. You seem to have
knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all
in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
everything.'

Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.

'You must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a
disciple's vanity.

'Some time,' he answered. 'Later, when I have time.'

'Later,' she murmured--'later than what?'

'I don't know,' he replied. 'This is so bright we can't see beyond.' He
turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay,
with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.

'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.

'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
a brass reed was again in her voice.

'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.

'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
voice to speak.

'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
north, even?'

She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.

'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter
and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn't it fine to be up here,
with the sky for nearest neighbour?'

'I did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. He turned to
her.

'As wise as God for the minute,' he replied softly. 'I think a few
furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.'

'And you are glad?' she asked. He laughed.

'_Carpe diem_,' he said. 'We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.'

'Why hell, Siegmund?' she asked in displeasure.

'I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I'm a failure,
Helena. But,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men
have plucked.'

She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
fashion.

'What does it matter, Helena?' he murmured. 'What does it matter? We are
here yet.'

The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.

'What is it, Helena?' he asked at last. 'Why should you cry?'

She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
unrecognizable voice:

'You won't leave me, will you, Siegmund?'

'How could I? How should I?' he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.

'How could I leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.

An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
decided, was supreme, transcendental.

The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
of stars.

    _Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
    Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._

She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
her language.

    _Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,
    Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._

She liked Heine best of all:

    _Wie Träume der Kindheit seh' ich es flimmern
    Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
    Und alte Erinnerung erzählt mir auf's Neue
    Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
    Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben...._

As she lay in Siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she
knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like th