too late to disturb
people, and going to the window, she looked out over the sea, feeling
beaten and confused. This was the first time she had given free rein to
her feeling against what Winton would have called his "bounderism." If
he had been English, she would never have been attracted by one who could
trample so on other people's feelings. What, then, had attracted her?
His strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for her, his
music! Nothing could spoil that in him. The sweep, the surge, and sigh
in his playing was like the sea out there, dark, and surf-edged, beating
on the rocks; or the sea deep-coloured in daylight, with white gulls over
it; or the sea with those sinuous paths made by the wandering currents,
the subtle, smiling, silent sea, holding in suspense its unfathomable
restlessness, waiting to surge and spring again. That was what she
wanted from him--not his embraces, not even his adoration, his wit, or
his queer, lithe comeliness touched with felinity; no, only that in his
soul which escaped through his fingers into the air and dragged at her
soul. If, when he came in, she were to run to him, throw her arms round
his neck, make herself feel close, lose herself in him! Why not? It was
her duty; why not her delight, too? But she shivered. Some instinct too
deep for analysis, something in the very heart of her nerves made her
recoil, as if she were afraid, literally scared of letting herself go, of
loving--the subtlest instinct of self-preservation against something
fatal; against being led on beyond--yes, it was like that curious,
instinctive sinking which some feel at the mere sight of a precipice, a
dread of going near, lest they should be drawn on and over by resistless
attraction.

She passed into their bedroom and began slowly to undress. To go to bed
without knowing where he was, what doing, thinking, seemed already a
little odd; and she sat brushing her hair slowly with the silver-backed
brushes, staring at her own pale face, whose eyes looked so very large
and dark. At last there came to her the feeling: "I can't help it! I
don't care!" And, getting into bed, she turned out the light. It seemed
queer and lonely; there was no fire. And then, without more ado, she
slept.

She had a dream of being between Fiorsen and her father in a
railway-carriage out at sea, with the water rising higher and higher,
swishing and sighing. Awakening always, like a dog, to perfect pre