He put the thought from him and once more turned over and slept.
With the morning it seemed further off, less inevitable; the sun was hidden behind raw grey mist, and when Ada, shivering and stupid, turned out into the chilly discomfort of the weather she was too much depressed for the exercise of feminine coquetry. The day’s work—hard necessary wood-chopping and equally necessary fishing for the larder—sent his thoughts into other channels, and it was not till he sat at their evening fire—warmed, fed and rested, with no duties to distract him—that he became conscious again, and even more strongly, of the change in their attitude and intercourse. Something new, of expectation, had crept into it; something of excitement and constraint. When their hands touched by chance they noticed it, were instantly awkward; when a silence fell Ada was embarrassed, uncomfortable and made palpable efforts to break it with her pointless giggle. When their eyes met, hers dropped and looked away.... When she rose at last and said good-night he was sure that she also knew. And since they both knew and the end was inevitable, certain....
“You’re not going yet,” he said—and caught at her wrist, laughing oddly.
“It’s late—and I’m sleepy,” she objected with a foolish little giggle; but made no effort to withdraw her wrist from his hold.
“Nonsense,” he told her, “it’s early yet—and you’re better by the fire. Sit down and keep me company for a bit longer.”
She giggled again—more faintly, more nervously—as she yielded to the pull of his fingers and sat down; offering no protest when, instead of releasing her arm, he drew it through his own and held it pressed to his side.... It was a windless night, very silent; no sound but the rush of the little stream below them, now and then a bird-cry and the snap and crackle of their fire. Once or twice Ada tried talking—of a hooting owl, of a buzzing insect—for the sake, obviously, of talking, of hearing a voice through the silence; but as he answered not at all, or by monosyllables, her forced little chatter died away. Even if the thought was not conscious, he knew she was his for the taking.
With her arm in his—with her body pressed close enough to feel her quickened breathing—he sat and stared into the fire; and at the last, when the inevitable was about to accomplish itself, there floated into his mental vision the delicate memory of the woman whom once he had desired. Phillida, a shadow impossible, leaned out of a vanished existence as the Damosel leaned out of Heaven; and he looked with his civilized, his artist’s eyes on the woman who was his for the taking.... Ada felt that he slackened his hold on her arm, felt him shrink a little from the pressure of her leaning shoulder.
“What is it?” she asked—uneasy; and perhaps it was the sound of her familiar voice that brought him back to primitive realities. The glow of the fire and the over-arching vault of darkness; and beneath it two creatures, male and female, alone with nature, subject only to the laws of her instinct.... The vision of a dead world, a dead woman, faded and he looked no more through the fastidious eyes of the civilized.
Man civilized is various, divided from his kind by many barriers—of taste, of speech, of habit of mind and breeding; man living as the brute is cut to one pattern, the pattern of his simple needs and lusts.... The warm shoulder pressed him and he drew it the closer; he was man in a world of much labour and instinct—who sweated through the seasons and wearied. Whose pains were of the body, whose pleasures of the body ... and alone in the night with a mate.
“’Ere, what’s that for?” she asked, making semblance of protest, as his hand went round her head and he pressed her cheek against his lips.