of God. Yet,
as he stood there, with his head bared, that strange smile which haunted
him in moments of deep feeling, showed that he had not surrendered to
the Universal, that his own spirit was but being fortified, and that
this was the true and secret source of his delight. He lay down in a
scoop of the stones. The sun entered there, but no wind, so that a dry
sweet scent exuded from the young shoots of heather. That warmth and
perfume crept through the shield of his spirit, and stole into his
blood; ardent images rose before him, the vision of an unending embrace.
Out of an embrace sprang Life, out of that the World was made, this
World, with its innumerable forms, and natures--no two alike! And from
him and her would spring forms to take their place in the great pattern.
This seemed wonderful, and right-for they would be worthy forms, who
would hand on those traditions which seemed to him so necessary and
great. And then there broke on him one of those delirious waves of
natural desire, against which he had so often fought, so often with
great pain conquered. He got up, and ran downhill, leaping over the
stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.

Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late enough
to bed. She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one of those
women who put on armour against Fate, because they are proud, and
dislike the thought that their sufferings should make others suffer;
because, too, their bodies are to them as it were sacred, having been
given them in trust, to cause delight. When she had finished, she looked
at herself in the glass rather more distrustfully than usual. She
felt that her sort of woman was at a discount in these days, and being
sensitive, she was never content either with her appearance, or her
habits. But, for all that, she went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways,
because she incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and
even if no one were going to see her, she never felt that she looked
charming enough. She was--as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed--the
kind of woman who spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to
those who wish women to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive
stoicism, very disconcerting. With little or no power of initiative, she
would do what she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame
an initiator; temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody,
she required love as a plant requires wa