she began to flutter in
earnest. She had said a dreadful thing! And yet, in her heart, she did
not take back her judgment. He really HAD been a brute. She would have
liked to soothe herself by playing, but it was too late to disturb
people, and going to the window, she looked out over the sea, feeling
beaten and confused. This was the first time she had given free rein to
her feeling against what Winton would have called his "bounderism."
If he had been English, she would never have been attracted by one who
could trample so on other people's feelings. What, then, had attracted
her? His strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for
her, his music! Nothing could spoil that in him. The sweep, the
surge, and sigh in his playing was like the sea out there, dark, and
surf-edged, beating on the rocks; or the sea deep-coloured in daylight,
with white gulls over it; or the sea with those sinuous paths made by
the wandering currents, the subtle, smiling, silent sea, holding in
suspense its unfathomable restlessness, waiting to surge and spring
again. That was what she wanted from him--not his embraces, not even
his adoration, his wit, or his queer, lithe comeliness touched with
felinity; no, only that in his soul which escaped through his fingers
into the air and dragged at her soul. If, when he came in, she were to
run to him, throw her arms round his neck, make herself feel close, lose
herself in him! Why not? It was her duty; why not her delight, too? But
she shivered. Some instinct too deep for analysis, something in the very
heart of her nerves made her recoil, as if she were afraid, literally
scared of letting herself go, of loving--the subtlest instinct of
self-preservation against something fatal; against being led on
beyond--yes, it was like that curious, instinctive sinking which some
feel at the mere sight of a precipice, a dread of going near, lest they
should be drawn on and over by resistless attraction.

She passed into their bedroom and began slowly to undress. To go to bed
without knowing where he was, what doing, thinking, seemed already a
little odd; and she sat brushing her hair slowly with the silver-backed
brushes, staring at her own pale face, whose eyes looked so very large
and dark. At last there came to her the feeling: "I can't help it! I
don't care!" And, getting into bed, she turned out the light. It seemed
queer and lonely; there was no fire. And then, without more ado, she
slept.

S