lies of people, she
liked formality. She felt she did not produce the right effect.
She was not effective: she was not beautiful: she was nothing.
Even before Skrebensky she felt unimportant, almost inferior. He
could take his part very well with the rest.

He and she went out into the night. There was a moon behind
clouds, shedding a diffused light, gleaming now and again in
bits of smoky mother-of-pearl. So they walked together on the
wet, ribbed sands near the sea, hearing the run of the long,
heavy waves, that made a ghostly whiteness and a whisper.

He was sure of himself. As she walked, the soft silk of her
dress--she wore a blue shantung, full-skirted--blew
away from the sea and flapped and clung to her legs. She wished
it would not. Everything seemed to give her away, and she could
not rouse herself to deny, she was so confused.

He would lead her away to a pocket in the sand-hills, secret
amid the grey thorn-bushes and the grey, glassy grass. He held
her close against him, felt all her firm, unutterably desirable
mould of body through the fine fibre of the silk that fell about
her limbs. The silk, slipping fierily on the hidden, yet
revealed roundness and firmness of her body, her loins, seemed
to run in him like fire, make his brain burn like brimstone. She
liked it, the electric fire of the silk under his hands upon her
limbs, the fire flew over her, as he drew nearer and nearer to
discovery. She vibrated like a jet of electric, firm fluid in
response. Yet she did not feel beautiful. All the time, she felt
she was not beautiful to him, only exciting. [She let him take her,
and he seemed mad, mad with excited passion. But she, as she lay
afterwards on the cold, soft sand, looking up at the blotted,
faintly luminous sky, felt that she was as cold now as she
had been before. Yet he, breathing heavily, seemed almost savagely
satisfied. He seemed revenged.

A little wind wafted the sea grass and passed over her face. Where was the
supreme fulfilment she would never enjoy? Why was she so cold, so
unroused, so indifferent?

As they went home, and she saw the many, hateful lights of the bungalow,
of several bungalows in a group, he said softly:

"Don't lock your door."

"I'd rather, here," she said.

"No, don't. We belong to each other. Don't let us deny it."

She did not answer. He took her silence for consent.

He shared his room with another man.

"I suppose," he said, "it won't alarm the house if