felt a great sense of disaster
impending. Day after day was made inert with a sense of
disaster. She became morbidly sensitive, depressed,
apprehensive. It was anguish to her when she saw one rook slowly
flapping in the sky. That was a sign of ill-omen. And the
foreboding became so black and so powerful in her, that she was
almost extinguished.

Yet what was the matter? At the worst he was only going away.
Why did she mind, what was it she feared? She did not know. Only
she had a black dread possessing her. When she went at night and
saw the big, flashing stars they seemed terrible, by day she was
always expecting some charge to be made against her.

He wrote in March to say that he was going to South Africa in
a short time, but before he went, he would snatch a day at the
Marsh.

As if in a painful dream, she waited suspended, unresolved.
She did not know, she could not understand. Only she felt that
all the threads of her fate were being held taut, in suspense.
She only wept sometimes as she went about, saying blindly:

"I am so fond of him, I am so fond of him."

He came. But why did he come? She looked at him for a sign.
He gave no sign. He did not even kiss her. He behaved as if he
were an affable, usual acquaintance. This was superficial, but
what did it hide? She waited for him, she wanted him to make
some sign.

So the whole of the day they wavered and avoided contact,
until evening. Then, laughing, saying he would be back in six
months' time and would tell them all about it, he shook hands
with her mother and took his leave.

Ursula accompanied him into the lane. The night was windy,
the yew trees seethed and hissed and vibrated. The wind seemed
to rush about among the chimneys and the church-tower. It was
dark.

The wind blew Ursula's face, and her clothes cleaved to her
limbs. But it was a surging, turgid wind, instinct with
compressed vigour of life. And she seemed to have lost
Skrebensky. Out there in the strong, urgent night she could not
find him.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Here," came his bodiless voice.

And groping, she touched him. A fire like lightning drenched
them.

"Anton?" she said.

"What?" he answered.

She held him with her hands in the darkness, she felt his
body again with hers.

"Don't leave me--come back to me," she said.

"Yes," he said, holding her in his arms.

But the male in him was scotched by the knowledge that she
was not under his spell nor his in