LITMIR.BIZ

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Still it was only twelve o'clock. As if he had nailed his clothing against the desk, he stood there and worked, forcing every stroke out of himself. It was a quarter to one; he could clear away. Then he ran downstairs.

      “You will meet me at the Fountain at two o'clock,” he said.

      “I can't be there till half-past.”

      “Yes!” he said.

      She saw his dark, mad eyes.

      “I will try at a quarter past.”

      And he had to be content. He went and got some dinner. All the time he was still under chloroform, and every minute was stretched out indefinitely. He walked miles of streets. Then he thought he would be late at the meeting-place. He was at the Fountain at five past two. The torture of the next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expression. It was the anguish of combining the living self with the shell. Then he saw her. She came! And he was there.

      “You are late,” he said.

      “Only five minutes,” she answered.

      “I'd never have done it to you,” he laughed.

      She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beautiful figure.

      “You want some flowers,” he said, going to the nearest florist's.

      She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of scarlet, brick-red carnations. She put them in her coat, flushing.

      “That's a fine colour!” he said.

      “I'd rather have had something softer,” she said.

      He laughed.

      “Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?” he said.

      She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He looked sideways at her as they walked. There was a wonderful close down on her face near the ear that he wanted to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the street, everything going round.

      As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him, and he took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe. Her ear, half-hidden among her blonde hair, was near to him. The temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there were other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to kiss it. After all, he was not himself, he was some attribute of hers, like the sunshine that fell on her.

      He looked quickly away. It had been raining. The big bluff of the Castle rock was streaked with rain, as it reared above the flat of the town. They crossed the wide, black space of the Midland Railway, and passed the cattle enclosure that stood out white. Then they ran down sordid Wilford Road.

      She rocked slightly to the tram's motion, and as she leaned against him, rocked upon him. He was a vigorous, slender man, with exhaustless energy. His face was rough, with rough-hewn features, like the common people's; but his eyes under the deep brows were so full of life that they fascinated her. They seemed to dance, and yet they were still trembling on the finest balance of laughter. His mouth the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph, yet did not. There was a sharp suspense about him. She bit her lip moodily. His hand was hard clenched over hers.

      They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and crossed the bridge. The Trent was very full. It swept silent and insidious under the bridge, travelling in a soft body. There had been a great deal of rain. On the river levels were flat gleams of flood water. The sky was grey, with glisten of silver here and there. In Wilford churchyard the dahlias were sodden with rain—wet black-crimson balls. No one was on the path that went along the green river meadow, along the elm-tree colonnade.

      There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled with gold. The river slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift, intertwining among itself like some subtle, complex creature. Clara walked moodily beside him.

      “Why,” she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, “did you leave Miriam?”

      He frowned.

      “Because I WANTED to leave her,” he said.

      “Why?”

      “Because I didn't want to go on with her. And I didn't want to marry.”

      She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down the muddy path. Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.

      “You didn't want to marry Miriam, or you didn't want to marry at all?” she asked.

      “Both,” he answered—“both!”

      They had to manoeuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools of water.

      “And what did she say?” Clara asked.

      “Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always HAD battled her off.”

      Clara pondered over this for a time.

      “But you have really been going with her for some time?” she asked.

      “Yes.”

      “And now you don't want any more of her?”

      “No. I know it's no good.”

      She pondered again.

      “Don't you think you've treated her rather badly?” she asked.

      “Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would have been no good going on. Two wrongs don't make a right.”

      “How old ARE you?” Clara asked.

      “Twenty-five.”

      “And I am thirty,” she said.

      “I know you are.”

      “I shall be thirty-one—or AM I thirty-one?”

      “I neither know nor care. What does it matter!”

      They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red track, already sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep bank between the grass. On either side stood the elm-trees like pillars along a great aisle, arching over and making high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell. All was empty and silent and wet. She stood on top of the stile, and he held both her hands. Laughing, she looked down into his eyes. Then she leaped. Her breast came against his; he held her, and covered her face with kisses.

      They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently she released his hand and put it round her waist.

      “You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,” she said.

      They walked along. His finger-tips felt the rocking of her breast. All was silent and deserted. On the left the red wet plough-land showed through the doorways between the elm-boles and their branches. On the right, looking down, they could see the tree-tops of elms growing far beneath them, hear occasionally the gurgle of the river. Sometimes there below they caught glimpses of the full, soft-sliding Trent, and of water-meadows dotted with small cattle.

      “It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come,” he said.

      But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the flush was fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that pouted disconsolate. She stirred against him as she walked, and his body was like a taut string.

      Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove rose highest above the river, their forward movement faltered to an end. He led her across to the grass, under the trees at the edge of the path. The cliff of red earth sloped swiftly down, through trees and bushes, to the river that glimmered and was dark between the foliage. The far-below water-meadows were very green. He and she stood leaning against one another, silent, afraid, their bodies touching all along. There came a quick gurgle from the river below.

      “Why,” he asked at length, “did you hate Baxter Dawes?”

      She turned to

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