her. That warmth and perfume crept through the
shield of his spirit, and stole into his blood; ardent images rose before
him, the vision of an unending embrace. Out of an embrace sprang Life,
out of that the World was made, this World, with its innumerable forms,
and natures--no two alike! And from him and her would spring forms to
take their place in the great pattern. This seemed wonderful, and
right-for they would be worthy forms, who would hand on those traditions
which seemed to him so necessary and great. And then there broke on him
one of those delirious waves of natural desire, against which he had so
often fought, so often with great pain conquered. He got up, and ran
downhill, leaping over the stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.

Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late enough
to bed. She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one of those
women who put on armour against Fate, because they are proud, and dislike
the thought that their sufferings should make others suffer; because,
too, their bodies are to them as it were sacred, having been given them
in trust, to cause delight. When she had finished, she looked at herself
in the glass rather more distrustfully than usual. She felt that her
sort of woman was at a discount in these days, and being sensitive, she
was never content either with her appearance, or her habits. But, for
all that, she went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways, because she
incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one
were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.
She was--as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed--the kind of woman who
spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women
to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very
disconcerting. With little or no power of initiative, she would do what
she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator;
temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love as a
plant requires water; she could give herself completely, yet remain oddly
incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and usually beloved of those who
thought her so.

With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a 'sweet
woman--a phrase she detested--for there was in her a queer vein of gentle
cynicism. She 'saw' with extraordinary clearness, as if she had been
born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atm