er. He worked
incessantly. Still it was only twelve o'clock. As if he had nailed his
clothing against the desk, he stood there and worked, forcing every
stroke out of himself. It was a quarter to one; he could clear away.
Then he ran downstairs.

"You will meet me at the Fountain at two o'clock," he said.

"I can't be there till half-past."

"Yes!" he said.

She saw his dark, mad eyes.

"I will try at a quarter past."

And he had to be content. He went and got some dinner. All the time
he was still under chloroform, and every minute was stretched out
indefinitely. He walked miles of streets. Then he thought he would be
late at the meeting-place. He was at the Fountain at five past two. The
torture of the next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expression. It
was the anguish of combining the living self with the shell. Then he saw
her. She came! And he was there.

"You are late," he said.

"Only five minutes," she answered.

"I'd never have done it to you," he laughed.

She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beautiful figure.

"You want some flowers," he said, going to the nearest florist's.

She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of scarlet, brick-red
carnations. She put them in her coat, flushing.

"That's a fine colour!" he said.

"I'd rather have had something softer," she said.

He laughed.

"Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?" he said.

She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He looked sideways at
her as they walked. There was a wonderful close down on her face near
the ear that he wanted to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness
of a very full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there
was about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the
street, everything going round.

As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him,
and he took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anaesthetic,
beginning to breathe. Her ear, half-hidden among her blonde hair, was
near to him. The temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there
were other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to kiss
it. After all, he was not himself, he was some attribute of hers, like
the sunshine that fell on her.

He looked quickly away. It had been raining. The big bluff of the Castle
rock was streaked with rain, as it reared above the flat of the town.
They crossed the wide, black space