“I like it also, here,” she said. “When one has been in many places, it is very nice here.”
He was silent again at this. So close on him she lay, and yet she answered him from so far away. But he did not mind.
“What was your own home like, when you were little?” he asked.
“My father was a landowner,” she replied. “It was near a river.”
This did not convey much to him. All was as vague as before. But he did not care, whilst she was so close.
“I am a landowner—a little one,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He had not dared to move. He sat there with his arms round her, her lying motionless on his breathing, and for a long time he did not stir. Then softly, timidly, his hand settled on the roundness of her arm, on the unknown. She seemed to lie a little closer. A hot flame licked up from his belly to his chest.
But it was too soon. She rose, and went across the room to a drawer, taking out a little tray-cloth. There was something quiet and professional about her. She had been a nurse beside her husband, both in Warsaw and in the rebellion afterwards. She proceeded to set a tray. It was as if she ignored Brangwen. He sat up, unable to bear a contradiction in her. She moved about inscrutably.
Then, as he sat there, all mused and wondering, she came near to him, looking at him with wide, grey eyes that almost smiled with a low light. But her ugly-beautiful mouth was still unmoved and sad. He was afraid.