“It is quite warm enough here,” she said, nestling in to him.
“Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.”
“No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.”
“I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the sunshine.”
She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund’s face. He lay, with half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs, she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her. This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome, shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves. She listened for Siegmund’s soul, but his heart overbeat all other sound, thudding powerfully.
VII
Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
“I suppose,” he said, “they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!”
“I was afraid they would wake you,” she smiled.