patient eyes. Her arms and legs showed greyish in
the white storm, but where the smock was cut off the shadows it made
upon her were faintly warm. One of her knees was bent, the foot
supported only by the toes. The other was firm upon the ground: she
looked, to the casual eye, to be standing on one leg. Her eyes in a
stare covered me, but were not concerned to see me so near. They had
the undiscerning look of one whose mind is numbed, as hers might well
be. Shelter--a barn, a hayrick--lay within a mile of her; and yet she
chose to suffer the cold, and was able to endure it. She knew it, I
supposed, for a thing not to be avoided; she took it as it came--as
she would have taken the warmth and pleasure of the sun. We humankind
with our wits for ever turned inward to ourselves, grieve or exult as
we bid ourselves: she, like all other creatures else, was not in that
self-relation; her parts were closer-knit, and could not separate to
envisage each other. So, at least, I read her--that she lived as she
could and as she must, neither looked back with regret nor forward
with longing. Time present, the flashing moment, was all her being.
That state will never be ours again.

I discovered before nightfall what she waited for there alone in the
cruel weather. A moving thing emerged from the heart of the white
fury, came up the valley along the shelving down: a shape like hers,
free-moving, thinly clad, suffering yet not paralysed by the storm. It
shaped as a man, a young man, and her mate. Taller, darker, stoutlier
made, his hardy legs were browner, and so were his arms--crossed like
hers over his breast and clasping his shoulders. His head was bare,
dark and crisply covered with short hair. His smock whipped about him
before, as the wind drove it; behind him it flacked and fluttered like
a flag. Patiently forging his way, bowing his head to the gale, he
came into range; and she, aware of him, waited.

He came directly to her. They greeted by touchings. He stretched out
his hands to her, touched her shoulders and sides. He touched both her
cheeks, her chin, the top of her head, all with the flat of the palm.
He stroked her wet and streaming hair. He held her by the shoulders
and peered into her face, then put both arms about her and drew her to
him. She, who had so far made no motions of her own, now uncrossed her
arms and daintily touched him in turn. She put both her palms flat
upon his breast; next on his thighs, next, being w