d just
see the pond at the mill before she went home.

Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off
along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was
transcendent over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed
to it. There was a glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The
night was as clear as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant
coughing of a sheep.

So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above the pond,
where the alders twisted their roots. She was glad to pass into the
shade out of the moon. There she stood, at the top of the fallen-away
bank, her hand on the rough trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that
was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some
reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for
the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something else out
of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant
hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, lamenting
desolately.

She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin. He had come
back then, unawares. She accepted it without remark, nothing mattered
to her. She sat down among the roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled,
hearing the sound of the sluice like dew distilling audibly into the
night. The islands were dark and half revealed, the reeds were dark
also, only some of them had a little frail fire of reflection. A fish
leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. This fire of the
chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness, repelled her.
She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly, and noiseless and without
motion. Birkin, small and dark also, his hair tinged with moonlight,
wandered nearer. He was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He
did not know she was there. Supposing he did something he would not
wish to be seen doing, thinking he was quite private? But there, what
did it matter? What did the small priyacies matter? How could it
matter, what he did? How can there be any secrets, we are all the same
organisms? How can there be any secrecy, when everything is known to
all of us?

He was touching unconsciously the dead husks of flowers as he passed
by, and talking disconnectedly to himself.

'You can't go away,' he was saying. 'There IS no away. You only
withdraw upon yourself.'

He threw a dead flower-husk on to the water.

'An antiphony--they