he path he caught
again the glimpse of coloured stuff and of a woman's black hair before
him. He hastened his pace and came in full view of the object of his
pursuit. The woman, who was carrying two bamboo vessels full of water,
heard his footsteps, stopped, and putting the bamboos down half turned
to look back. Willems also stood still for a minute, then walked
steadily on with a firm tread, while the woman moved aside to let
him pass. He kept his eyes fixed straight before him, yet almost
unconsciously he took in every detail of the tall and graceful figure.
As he approached her the woman tossed her head slightly back, and with a
free gesture of her strong, round arm, caught up the mass of loose black
hair and brought it over her shoulder and across the lower part of her
face. The next moment he was passing her close, walking rigidly, like a
man in a trance. He heard her rapid breathing and he felt the touch of
a look darted at him from half-open eyes. It touched his brain and his
heart together. It seemed to him to be something loud and stirring like
a shout, silent and penetrating like an inspiration. The momentum of his
motion carried him past her, but an invisible force made up of surprise
and curiosity and desire spun him round as soon as he had passed.

She had taken up her burden already, with the intention of pursuing her
path. His sudden movement arrested her at the first step, and again she
stood straight, slim, expectant, with a readiness to dart away suggested
in the light immobility of her pose. High above, the branches of the
trees met in a transparent shimmer of waving green mist, through which
the rain of yellow rays descended upon her head, streamed in glints down
her black tresses, shone with the changing glow of liquid metal on her
face, and lost itself in vanishing sparks in the sombre depths of her
eyes that, wide open now, with enlarged pupils, looked steadily at the
man in her path. And Willems stared at her, charmed with a charm that
carries with it a sense of irreparable loss, tingling with that feeling
which begins like a caress and ends in a blow, in that sudden hurt of a
new emotion making its way into a human heart, with the brusque stirring
of sleeping sensations awakening suddenly to the rush of new hopes, new
fears, new desires--and to the flight of one's old self.

She moved a step forward and again halted. A breath of wind that came
through the trees, but in Willems' fancy seemed to b