ou want me to be a mere THING for you! No
thank you! IF you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it
to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk
over them--GO to them then, if that's what you want--go to them.'

'No,' he said, outspoken with anger. 'I want you to drop your assertive
WILL, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is what I
want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let
yourself go.'

'Let myself go!' she re-echoed in mockery. 'I can let myself go, easily
enough. It is you who can't let yourself go, it is you who hang on to
yourself as if it were your only treasure. YOU--YOU are the Sunday
school teacher--YOU--you preacher.'

The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of
her.

'I don't mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,' he said.
'I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Dionysic or any other.
It's like going round in a squirrel cage. I want you not to care about
yourself, just to be there and not to care about yourself, not to
insist--be glad and sure and indifferent.'

'Who insists?' she mocked. 'Who is it that keeps on insisting? It isn't
ME!'

There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He was silent for
some time.

'I know,' he said. 'While ever either of us insists to the other, we
are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn't come.'

They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the bank. The
night was white around them, they were in the darkness, barely
conscious.

Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put her hand
tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and silently, in peace.

'Do you really love me?' she said.

He laughed.

'I call that your war-cry,' he replied, amused.

'Why!' she cried, amused and really wondering.

'Your insistence--Your war-cry--"A Brangwen, A Brangwen"--an old
battle-cry. Yours is, "Do you love me? Yield knave, or die."'

'No,' she said, pleading, 'not like that. Not like that. But I must
know that you love me, mustn't I?'

'Well then, know it and have done with it.'

'But do you?'

'Yes, I do. I love you, and I know it's final. It is final, so why say
any more about it.'

She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt.

'Are you sure?' she said, nestling happily near to him.

'Quite sure--so now have done--accept it and have done.'

She was nestled quite close to him.

'Have done