zzled face, as she gave him her
hand. He too could not perceive her.

In a moment she was gone, to get her outdoor things. Then
again, as when she had been at school, they walked out into the
town to tea. And they went to the same tea-shop.

She knew a great difference in him. The kinship was there,
the old kinship, but he had belonged to a different world from
hers. It was as if they had cried a state of truce between him
and her, and in this truce they had met. She knew, vaguely, in
the first minute, that they were enemies come together in a
truce. Every movement and word of his was alien to her
being.

Yet still she loved the fine texture of his face, of his
skin. He was rather browner, physically stronger. He was a man
now. She thought his manliness made the strangeness in him. When
he was only a youth, fluid, he was nearer to her. She thought a
man must inevitably set into this strange separateness, cold
otherness of being. He talked, but not to her. She tried to
speak to him, but she could not reach him.

He seemed so balanced and sure, he made such a confident
presence. He was a great rider, so there was about him some of a
horseman's sureness and habitual definiteness of decision, also
some of the horseman's animal darkness. Yet his soul was only
the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a set of habitual
actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable quick of the man
was inaccessible. She knew nothing of it. She could only feel
the dark, heavy fixity of his animal desire.

This dumb desire on his part had brought him to her? She was
puzzled, hurt by some hopeless fixity in him, that terrified her
with a cold feeling of despair. What did he want? His desires
were so underground. Why did he not admit himself? What did he
want? He wanted something that should be nameless. She shrank in
fear.

Yet she flashed with excitement. In his dark, subterranean
male soul, he was kneeling before her, darkly exposing himself.
She quivered, the dark flame ran over her. He was waiting at her
feet. He was helpless, at her mercy. She could take or reject.
If she rejected him, something would die in him. For him it was
life or death. And yet, all must be kept so dark, the
consciousness must admit nothing.

"How long," she said, "are you staying in England?"

"I am not sure--but not later than July, I believe."

Then they were both silent. He was here, in England, for six
months. They had a space of six months b